THE SWORD OF CHRISI 



A. N D 



THE WORLD WAR 

PERRYJ.STACKIIOUSE 




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By 
PERRY J. ^TACKHOUSE 

Minister Tabernacle Baptist Church 
Utica, N. Y. 

Author of " The Social Ideals of the Lord's Prayer " 



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THE GRIFFITH AND ROWLAND PRESS 



PHILADELPHIA 




ST. LOUIS 


LOS ANGELES 


NEW YORK 


TORONTO 



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Copyright 1917 by 
PERRY J. STACKHOUSE 



Published December, 1917 



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PREFACE 



The World War has forced many new, pressing, 
and perplexing problems upon the preacher. To 
him has been intrusted the gospel of reconciliation, 
of peace and good will to men, and how to preach 
that gospel in a world of war when nation is divided 
against nation and a man's foes are found even in 
his own national household, is by no means easy for 
him to determine. He may be successful in evading 
or ignoring the problems of the higher criticism and 
the doctrine of evolution ; but war, with its terrible, 
insistent, and heart-searching questions, is a brutal, 
stubborn fact that must be met and answered. 

Let it be granted that the preacher has fallen 
upon difficult days. New questions which go to 
the very core of religion and ethics are hurled at 
him. A hundred new demands are being made upon 
his time, and when he is asked to give up his service 
for the advertising of liberty loans or for a discus- 
sion of the problems of food conservation, he is 
sometimes in doubt as to whether the calls of coun- 
try are the calls of God. 

7 



8 PREFACE 

This book, in part, is based upon addresses given 
by the writer to members of his congregation and 
other audiences, on some of the questions raised by 
the war. The material, however, has been revised 
and rearranged, and four of the eight chapters are 
new. It is an attempt to interpret the gospel and 
the duties of Christian citizenship in an age of war 
to the people who wait upon our ministry. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

Prayer for Our Soldiers, Our Sailors, 
AND Our Allies 1 1 

I. Has Christianity Collapsed? 15 

11. Why We Are Fighting 30 

III. Is It Right for a Good Samaritan to 

Fight ? 45 

IV. Why Doesn't God Stop the War?. ... 57 
V. The Call of the Nation 69 

VI. The Sword of Christ 81 

VII. Can War Be Abolished? 93 

VIII. When the War is Over, What? 109 



PRAYER 

FOR OUR SOLDIERS, OUR SAILORS, AND OUR ALLIES 

For our gallant soldiers and sailors who are an- 
swering the call of country and of humanity, we 
pray. 

For their spirit of devotion and chivalry and self- 
sacrifice and wilHngness to lay down their lives for 
our liberties and rights and the liberties and rights 
of other nations, we thank Thee. 

For the high courage, noble adventure, and love 
of the intangible things of the spirit which have 
fired them in the fight for freedom, we give Thee 
thanks. 

We pray for them. We pray that Thou wilt pro- 
tect them from the dangers of the sea, from fire and 
tempest, and from the deadly vessel of destruction 
which lurks under the sea seeking its prey. 

Guard them from flying bullets, from bursting 
shells, from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, 
from the poison gas and liquid fire that waste at 
noonday ; and when hell is let loose upon them may 

IT 



12 PRAYER 

they find the secret place of the Most High and 
abide under the shadow of the Almighty, finding 
in Him refuge and fortress. 

We pray that they may be preserved from the 
things that hurt the soul. Deliver them from the 
perils of strong drink, the lusts of the flesh, and 
the vainglory of life. In a foreign land may they 
honor the women of their friends and the women of 
their foes as they honor the women of their own 
country. Help them to be Big Brothers to all who 
are weak, to make the paths straight for the feet 
of little children, and to be Good Samaritans to all 
people, whether friends or enemies, who have fallen 
upon evil days. Grant that they may fight without 
bitterness, hatred, or cruelty, showing mercy upon 
their enemies, remembering that God is the Father 
of all men, and that it is his will that all men should 
live together as brothers. 

We pray for the nations with whom we are allied 
in the great battle for righteousness. They have 
been bearing the heavy burden in the heat of the 
day, and in the months in which we were walking 
in the paths of comfort and safety they were fight- 
ing our battles, struggling for our liberties, and 
without stint laying down their lives upon the altar 
of civilization. 



PRAYER 13 

We thank Thee that in the darkest night, when it 
seemed as if right were on the scaffold and wrong 
upon the throne, they kept their tryst with Thee. 
In the name of humanity we bless Thee that when 
the kingdoms of this world and the glory thereof 
were offered to them at the price of dishonor, they 
chose the road that led to the cross. 

O God, grant unto the war-weary nations of the 
earth a speedy peace, a peace of righteousness that 
shall outlast the days of our children and of our 
children's children. Bring our dear ones home safe 
in body and soul. This is the prayer of mothers 
and fathers, of wives and sweethearts. This is the 
prayer we all offer, in the name of thy Son, Jesus 
Christ. 



I 

HAS CHRISTIANITY COLLAPSED? 



The world war has been a merciless critic of 
men and governments, of political and economic 
theories, of rites and institutions. Nothing has been 
too sacred and nothing has been too common to 
escape the acid test of the great conflict. Into the 
melting-pot has gone man with his opinions, creeds, 
material and cultural possessions, loves and pas- 
sions, to be tried with fire. 

It has seemed to some like the great Day of the 
Lord, when every man's work shall be made mani- 
fest. Not a few are insisting that we are witnessing 
the breakdown of what we had proudly called our 
Christian civilization, and that upon the ruins of 
the old order we must slowly and painfully build 
up a new social 'structure from which the old de- 

15 



l6 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

fects will have been struck out, that it may perhaps 
save posterity from another such holocaust of 
civilization. 

The great war, with its unspeakable horrors, 
brutalities, and recrudescence of barbarism, has 
forced Christianity to look some ugly and sinister 
facts in the face. It had seemed to some of us 
that the awakening of the church to her social 
mission, the deeper recognition of the sanctity of 
human life as expressed in legislation for the pro- 
tection of women and children, the new penology 
with its juvenile courts and probation officers, the 
multiplication of arbitration treaties among the na- 
tions, the great missionary propaganda with its 
slogan, " the evangelization of the world in this 
generation " — it had seemed that these things were 
heralds of a brighter and better day and confirmed 
us in our conviction that we were not far from 
the kingdom of God. We were looking for a new 
earth, with equality of opportunity for all, a world 
in which justice and brotherhood would walk to- 
gether in the bonds of love, and nations as well as 
individuals would seek first the kingdom of God 
and his righteousness. 

In the midst of our pleasant dreams of the speedy 
coming of a world set free from some of the worst 
evils which have afflicted and tormented humanity, 
there fell from what seemed to the majority of us 
an unclouded midsummer sky the thunderbolt of 
war. 



HAS CHRISTIANITY COLLAPSED? l^J 

We had been dreaming of world peace, and in- 
stead there was world war — of the conscription 
of the unearned wealth of the few for the benefit 
of the many, and instead there was a conscription of 
millions of men and billions of dollars for the manu- 
facture and operation of engines of destruction that 
have drained the life-blood of Europe to the lees. 
We had been discussing the conservation of human 
life, planning to make it cleaner and safer and 
happier; and in a few brief years by the madness 
of war the world has been despoiled of the 
flower of its manhood. 

It was inevitable that such a war as is waged 
to-day should affect Christianity perhaps more vi- 
tally than any other of our great social institutions. 
Christianity proclaims the Fatherhood of God and 
the brotherhood of man ; it exalts love as the solvent 
of all difficulties in the social and political world; 
it is a message of peace and good will. Its beati- 
tudes are to the meek, the merciful, the pure in 
heart, and the seeker after righteousness. Against 
all forms of hate and greed and brute force it op- 
poses the glowing ideals of love, service, and sacri- 
fice for the common good. Over against all 
national and racial differences Christianity puts 
humanity, for in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew 
nor Greek, neither bond nor free, all are members 
of the one brotherhood. 

This war, with its insensate brutalities, chants of 

B 



l8 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

hate, lust of blood, wholesale destruction of human 
life, and massacre of multitudes of innocent and 
helpless people, has seemed to not a few people 
clear evidence of the collapse of Christianity. The 
Bishop of London is reported to have said, " From 
end to end of England we find people who at the 
bottom of their hearts have grown to believe — 
though they are afraid to admit it — that the war 
was the absolute breakdown of Christianity." 

One of the keenest thrusts at the church is made 
by Israel Zangwill. He writes : ^ " The real religion 
of England, as of most countries, is patriotism. 
Listening to the preacher it is difficult to escape the 
conviction that Christ was in the army, and that the 
Madonna made munitions." 

Henry Watterson editorially exclaims : '' The con- 
flict between Christianity and militarism, between 
freedom and autocracy is an irrepressible conflict, 
. . . Behold the flames of hell sweeping over 
three-fourths of Christian Europe. If this be 
Christianity, what is paganism?" 

Naturally the established churches have incurred 
the most severe criticism, because of their failure 
to exercise any controlling influence upon the na- 
tional policies of their respective countries. The 
Countess of Warwick has charged ^ that the es- 
tablished church of England is a " pitifully forlorn 
body, bankrupt in valor and policy, resources and 

1 " The War for the World," p. 243. 

2 " The New Religion," " Hibbert Journal," July, 191 7. 



HAS CHRISTIANITY COLLAPSED? IQ 

prestige, that . . . failed in the hour of need 
to ' play the game.' " 

The Holy Father at Rome, perhaps, has cut the 
most sorry figure in the whole unfortunate affair. 
Reverenced by one-half of the Christian world as 
the Vicar of Christ, and with a claim of infallibility 
in regard to all questions of doctrine and morals, 
he was peculiarly qualified to speak with an au- 
thority that would be final to the Catholic peoples 
of the warring nations. His failure to pronounce 
definitely upon the rights and wrongs of war, his 
silence in the presence of crimes that have outraged 
the moral sense of the world, has seemed to many 
loyal Catholics like an abrogation of the rights of 
moral judgment. 

M. Loisy, the famous French writer and theo- 
logian, probably voices the sentiments of the vast 
majority of the French people toward Pope Bene- 
dict XV when he writes : ^ " His conduct from the 
opening of hostilities assured us that he was com- 
pletely neutral, even before his utterances confirmed 
it. He has tolerated the crushing of noble Belgium, 
the victim of her loyalty, the only country left in 
the world whose government is professedly Cath- 
olic; he has borne the sight of Louvain in flames, 
the destruction of the fairest and most famous of 
Catholic universities; he has been able to witness 
the massacre by the Germans of a multitude of help- 
less men, women, children, and priests. A judge 

""The Saturday Review," December 23, 1916. 



20 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

or a priest needs above all things to show impar- 
tiality; but the moment a judge becomes neutral 
in a question of justice he steps down from the 
bench, and the moment a priest shows himself 
neutral in a question of right and wrong he vacates 
his office." 

The papacy, with supreme power vested in one 
man, is the most autocratic system in the world, and 
it may be that the neutrality of Pope Benedict XV 
is due to an instinctive feeling that, in the great 
war of democracy against autocracy, the triumph 
of democracy in the State may be the prelude to 
democracy in the Church. Whatever may be the 
explanation of the " damning neutrality " of the 
pope, be it moral impotence, or Germany's price for 
the old papal dream of temporal power, there can 
be no doubt that it has been a painful shock to 
millions of Catholics, and Benedict XV presents a 
most abject, humiliating spectacle, when compared 
with the heroic, self-sacrificing, saintly Cardinal 
Mercier, the Good Shepherd of the Catholic flock 
of martyred Belgium. 

In times of great emotional upheaval, when the 
souls of men have been profoundly stirred by pas- 
sion, and we seem to be watching the breakdown 
of modern civilization, it is easy to yield to a panic 
of fear and to accept the idea that religion, like the 
divine right of kings, is in the crucible of God, and 
when the fires have burned themselves out there 



HAS CHRISTIANITY COLLAPSED? 21 

will be nothing left but the memory of an old 
superstition. 

The fact that war with all its inexcusable out- 
rages and horrors has burst upon us, is no evidence 
that Corsica has conquered Galilee ; it simply proves 
that the church has been a somewhat inefficient 
teacher of Christian ideals, and that the leaven of 
the gospel has not yet transformed the kingdoms 
of this world into the kingdoms of our Lord and 
his Christ. 

Mr. G. K. Chesterton rushes to the defense of 
Christianity with the epigram : '' Christianity has 
not been tried and found wanting; it has been 
found difficult and not tried." If the epigram were 
wholly true, it would be perhaps the most severe 
judgment that could be passed upon Christianity 
as a religion for humanity. But like most epigrams 
it is only partly true. 

In various sections of our social order Christian- 
ity has been tried, and wherever it has been given a 
fair and honest trial, it has not been found wanting. 

That in every age multitudes have found in 
Christianity an answer to the great questions which 
the soul propounds, an inspiration to the most un- 
selfish service for others, a power that has stayed 
their souls in the evil day of temptation, comforted 
them in the bleak day of adversity, and given them 
the victory over sin and death, is supported by evi- 
dence that is within the reach of all. 

Even in the present social order with its bitter 



22 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

class struggle, merciless competition, and jungle- 
law standards, many men are applying the princi- 
ples of love and service to commercial and industrial 
life, and are demonstrating that the gospel is suffi- 
cient for the salvation of society as well as of indi- 
viduals. At a meeting of the Industrial Congress 
at Syracuse, New York, in 191 6, the writer heard 
Colonel George Pope, president of the National 
Association of Manufacturers, make this significant 
statement : " I believe there is a new era in Amer- 
ican industry. The new era implies less insistence 
upon private rights, greater insistence upon public 
duty. It means translating our industrial forces 
into a, spirit of tolerance and mutuality. The new 
era is the Golden Rule applied to all men and women 
who work in American industry. For the sover- 
eignty of manhood and womanhood is the basis of 
industrial nobility." If we could inject that spirit 
(which is none other than the spirit of Jesus) into 
employers and employees, into capital and labor, the 
grave problems of our economic order would not 
be far from a solution. 

The great war is not an evidence of the break- 
down of Christianity; it simply proves that inter- 
national relationships have not yet come under the 
sway of the Christian ideal of brotherhood. But 
even here we note a great change for the better. 
War was once a normal condition of society. No 
one ever dreamed of apologizing for war. That 



HAS CHRISTIANITY COLLAPSED? 23 

nation should rise up against nation, that the weak 
power should become the prey of the strong, that the 
state should recognize no law but the law of might, 
were facts accepted without question. 

To-day, war is on the defensive. Its conse- 
quences have been so terrible, in the loss of human 
life and the waste of capital, that no nation dare 
assume the responsibility. War is a monster for 
which no nation is willing to accept paternity. 
Millions of men are enduring the most awful hard- 
ships and sufferings, and are ready for the supreme 
sacrifice, because of a conviction that this is the 
war that will end war. It is safe to state that in 
no past war did men ever cherish the hope that by 
their sufferings and death they were preparing the 
way for an era of permanent peace. 

Thus the war has brought a new recognition 
of the sanctity of human life, and it is a triumph of 
the Christian ideal that the life is more than terri- 
torial expansion and the body more than visions 
of the world empire. Sarah Grand, in her book, 
" The Winged Victory," has this pregnant saying : 
*' Good may be made to flow from evil. On a little 
table stood a crucifix, symbol of the greatest crime 
ever committed upon earth, yet with what glorious 
results." If out of this world war, with all its 
bloodshed, agony, tears, and heartache, there should 
come the determination that the standards of 
Christianity, which have demonstrated their prac- 
ticability in the individual, community, and national 



24 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

life, must be applied to international relations, who 
can say that the end attained was not worth the 
terrible price that was paid? 

The man who sneers at the breakdown of Chris- 
tianity because of the wickedness of war, but who 
makes no distinction between protective and ag- 
gressive force, between those who fight for conquest 
and those who are giving their lives, not to exploit 
and oppress weaker nations, but to protect them 
from the selfish ambitions of the ruthless, between 
those who violate a solemn treaty as a mere scrap 
of paper, " a matter of international etiquette, that 
must be forgotten when life and death are in- 
volved," * and those who fight for the integrity of 
international law, has lost his mental equilibrium, 
and has allowed his sympathies or his prejudices to 
run away with his judgment. 

War is a great evil, as the amputation of a limb 
is a great evil; but sometimes both are necessary 
to conserve certain things that are of greater worth. 
The price of war is high, but there are moral and 
spiritual values that are priceless. If men had not 
been willing to fight for their homes, their liberties, 
and the homes and the liberties of their neighbors, 
we would live in a world dominated by the cunning, 
the brutal, and the powerful. In reply to the state- 
ment that war only settles which side is the stronger. 
Captain A. T. Mahan, writes : ^ " We have seen 

* Munsterberg, " The War and America," p. 185. 
° " Some Neglected Aspects of War," p. xi. 



HAS CHRISTIANITY COLLAPSED? 25 

war free four million slaves and establish on this 
continent a united people; a contribution toward 
the world peace and the welfare of North America, 
in sparing the expenses of large standing armies 
and the woes of probable collisions, which not a 
dozen Hague Conferences will effect." This war, 
therefore, instead of spelling the bankruptcy of 
Christianity, may from certain aspects be viewed 
as a shining evidence that man is of more value 
than a sheep, that for the sake of ideals men are 
ready to sacrifice material ease and comfort and to 
lay down their lives for others. 

This war, with all its revelation of hate and 
greed, lust and savagery, has also evoked some of 
the finest qualities of Christian manhood. When 
the great war of liberation began, and the clarion 
call to fight for humanity was heard, many men 
who had been living lives of selfish ease — pleasure- 
seekers, money-lovers, with apparently no thought 
of anything higher than the gratification of their 
bodily senses — suddenly rose to heights of moral 
grandeur. We have witnessed the miracle of men 
transformed by a great passion into the likeness of 
the sons of God, suffering privations cheerfully, 
pouring out their money like water, seeking the post 
of danger as the place of honor, facing death every 
day with clear eyes and untroubled hearts, counting 
not their lives dear unto themselves, if by their sacri- 
fices they could contribute to the safety and peace 
of the world. Devotion to the common good, self- 



26 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

denial, are Christian virtues, and greater love hath 
no man than this, that a man will lay down his life 
for his friends. 

In the great experiences of life the superficialities, 
the trivialities, fall away, and men face the ultimate 
realities. A soldier is reported to have said just be- 
fore going back to» the trenches : " You may take 
it from me, they have been doing more thinking 
about God up there in the last six months than the 
most of them have done in the rest of their lives." 
This sentiment has been expressed in a beautiful 
little poem published in " The Spectator," entitled 
" Christ in Flanders." The poet puts the words in 
the mouth of a soldier: 

We had forgotten You or very nearly — 

You did not seem to touch us very nearly — 

Of course we thought about You now and then : 

Especially in any time of trouble — 

We knew that You were good in times of trouble — 

But we are very ordinary men. 

He argues that there were so many things at 
home they had to think of, that often they only 
thought of Him on Sundays, and perhaps not even 
on a Sunday. 

Now we remember : over here in Flanders — 
It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders. 
The hideous warfare seems to make things clear. 
We never thought about You much in England, 
But now that we are far away from England, 
We have no doubts, we know that You are here. 



HAS CHRISTIANITY COLLAPSED? 2/ 

Then follows this prayer : 

And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon — 
Especially I think we ask for pardon 
And that You'll stand beside us to the last. 

Armchair philosophers may see in the great war 
a breakdown of religion, but to many men the war 
has brought for the first time a knowledge of God, 
and has given a richer meaning to atonement by 
blood and to Hfe everlasting. 

This war is not only a struggle between two 
groups of nations, but also between two forms of 
culture. Irreconcilable forces are grappling with 
one another.^ '' Individual liberty is drawn up 
against collective servitude, personal initiative 
against the tyranny of state socialism, old habits 
of international integrity and respect for treaties 
against the supremacy of the cannon." It is a con- 
test between might and right, between autocracy 
and democracy, between the idea that the state is 
above the standards of individual morality and the 
idea that the laws which are binding upon the in- 
dividual are also binding upon the state, between 
the idea that a good war hallows a bad cause and 
the idea that force must never be employed except 
in defense of liberty and national honor. It is a 
struggle between civilization and culture in the 
German sense of that term, a fight of freedom and 

* Gu stave Le Bon, " The Psychology of the Great War," p. 19. 



28 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

the moral law against physical force and militarism. 
To many of us it seems like a battle between Chris- 
tianity and a new form of paganism. 

This war, so far as the allied nations are con- 
cerned, is not an evidence of the collapse of Chris- 
tianity. On the contrary, it proves that there is 
in men and nations a heroic and sacrificial spirit, 
that bids them choose death rather than surrender 
moral values which alone make life worth the liv- 
ing. Paul Sabatier refers '' to an engraving which 
symbolizes the soul of this war by two persons. On 
one side of the picture is the king of the Belgians, 
dreaming alone in a ruined house, in the midst of 
a landscape which reveals in all directions nothing 
but devastated villages; and Wilhelm II suddenly 
rises before him, and in a tone which he seeks to 
render amiable, asks him, " Then you have lost 
everything?" "Yes, I have lost everything," the 
king replies, " but I have saved my soul." 

If England had stood aloof from the great strug- 
gle, and permitted the conquest-hungry Prussians 
to crush Belgium and France under her iron heel, 
would she not have gone down in history as a na- 
tion that in the great day followed the easy path 
of unrighteous neutrality rather than the thorny 
road of honor and sacrifice? 

If the great Republic, that has stood before the 
world as the most notable exponent of liberty and 
democracy, had continued as a mere spectator of 

'"A Frenchman's Thoughts on the War," p. 107. 



HAS CHRISTIANITY COLLAPSED? 29 

a war that is being waged in defense of the liberties 
of small nations and the principles of democracy, 
was there not a danger that her candlestick would 
be taken from her ? 

Let us cease our prating of the collapse of Chris- 
tianity. It is an insult to the brave men who are 
carrying the banners of freedom and humanity upon 
the bloody battle-fields of Europe; it is a confes- 
sion that ideals that are worth talking about are not 
worth the price of suffering and death. 

This war is not an evidence of the collapse of 
Christianity; it is a proof that in an imperfect 
world it is sometimes necessary to oppose force 
with force to preserve the higher things of the 
spirit. 



II 

WHY WE ARE FIGHTING 

It was many months after war had actually com- 
menced before the American people learned the real 
meaning of the conflict now raging. We were so 
far away from the actual scene of hostilities, there 
were so many charges and countercharges, the Allies 
were so inferior to the Germans in their press 
propaganda, that many Americans concluded that 
it was just a family row among the kings, and the 
wisest course for all outsiders to adopt was to stand 
pat and let the royalties fight it out to a finish. 
To tell the truth, there were not a few who cher- 
ished the hope that in the general mix-up some of 
the kings and emperors might get their crowns 
knocked off, and be forced into some less ornamental 
and more productive occupations. 

We were to be neutral, not only in act but even 
in thought, and upon the grand-stand of American 
soil we took our seats and watched the teams as 
they lined up on the European gridiron. We 
had not watched very long before we discovered 
that one side, the stronger side at that time, was 
not playing the game according to the rules. In- 
stead of keeping within the chalk-lines, they sent 
30 



WHY WE ARE FIGHTING 3I 

their battalions crashing^ through neutral territory, 
knocking down men, women, and children, and lay- 
ing waste towns and cities. It is true that they 
scored a touch-down and nearly won the game in 
that first quarter, but our admiration for the effi- 
ciency of the German machine failed to compensate 
for the horror aroused by their treacherous and un- 
fair fighting. However, we remembered that Gen- 
eral Sherman had said that war was not a parlor 
game, and so we shut our teeth and waited to see 
what we should see. We had not long to wait for 
sights that cried out for more than the seeing. 

For what things we have seen since this great- 
est and bloodiest war of all wars began! The 
violation of Belgium and the enslavement of her 
people was followed quickly by the desolation of 
Servia and Poland, the attempt to array Moslems 
against Christians in a holy war, the massacre of 
a million Armenians, the starvation of Jews and 
Syrians in the Holy Land, the deliberate sinking 
of hospital and relief ships, the zeppelin outrages 
upon unfortified cities, the intimidation of small 
nations, the ruthless submarine warfare in defiance 
of all international law! We saw American lives 
sacrificed by German autocracy, American soil filled 
with spies who blew up our factories and put bombs 
in our ships, and the German secretary of state 
caught with the goods on his person in his attempt 
to incite Mexico to invade Texas and dismember 
the Union. 



32 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

Slowly but surely the conscience of America was 
mobilized against Germany, and we have felt, in 
the words of the Hindu saying, that " He who 
fails to protect morality when morality is being 
flouted is himself guilty of the violation of moral- 
ity." Slowly but surely the conviction has seized 
upon us, that life on a planet dominated by a nation 
with a " submarine soul " and submarine methods 
of gaining its ends, would not be a life worth living, 
that it is better to die as a freeman fighting for the 
things we have always held dear, than to eke out a 
miserable existence, even with peace and plenty, at 
the cost of national manhood. 

Lloyd George, the premier of Great Britain, in a 
speech delivered shortly after America entered the 
war, declared that " the United States of America 
of a noble tradition never broken, have never en- 
gaged in a war except for liberty. This is the great- 
est struggle for liberty they have ever embarked 
upon." 

Sydney Brooks writes ^ in a like vein : " Three 
times in her history has America struck resounding 
blows for liberty. On the first occasion she assailed 
a great political principle. On the second she made 
an end of human slavery on this continent. Now 
she is taking up arms to beat back a tidal wave of 
deharmonized tyranny that threatens the very fabric 
of civilization itself. America has entered the lists 
under the compelling power of her primal passion 

1 " The North American Review," May, 1917, p. 681. 



WHY WE ARE FIGHTING 33 

to serve and save the world at whatever cost to her- 
self." These are something more than mere com- 
plimentary terms. We go into this struggle with 
clean hands and pure hearts. We have no song of 
hate to sing. We have no old grudges to work out 
upon any nation in Europe. We envy no country 
its prosperity. We have no territorial ambitions to 
gratify. We desire not an inch of land nor a dollar 
of indemnity. We go into this war not to get but 
to give, and we give our most priceless possession, 
the flower of our youth and manhood. We go not 
because we want to go, but because we must go. 

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil 
side. 

That moment came to us. We procrastinated as 
long as we dared. We even got a European repu- 
tation as a nation of note-writers. Germany 
counted on our staying out just as she counted on 
England staying out. She thought that the wounds 
to our pride and the insults to our national ideals 
would be compensated by the billions of dollars we 
were making out of war and food supplies. She 
planned, as we learned from a speech of our late 
ambassador to Germany, Mr. Gerard, on picking a 
quarrel with us after the war, and sending over her 
army and navy to collect a huge war indemnity 
that would enable her once more to set up national 
housekeeping on the former lavish style 
c 



34 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

Germany is a very efficient nation. Her powers 
of organization and her applications of the discov- 
eries of science to the realm of material things have 
given her a foremost place among the nations. But 
Germany, with all her knowledge of science, philos- 
ophy, and statecraft, has shown a singular density 
in respect to the souls of other nations. 

She thought that Belgium would put up a mere 
formal protest and allow her troops to march 
through the territory to strike a deadly blow at the 
heart of France. Her view of Great Britain was 
voiced by Bismarck when referring to the surren- 
der by Great Britain of the Ionian Isles to Greece. 
Bismarck said, " A power that ceases to take and 
begins to give away can be accounted out of Eu- 
ropean politics." Bismarck's successors in office 
were convinced that England was a decadent nation 
which had neither the inclination nor the moral and 
physical fiber to stand up against a first-class fight- 
ing power. 

The view that the Central Powers took concern- 
ing America is summed up by Constantin Dumba.^ 
" On his way home Constantin Dumba spoke his 
placid mind about the peculiar policy of the United 
States. ' We do as we please over there,' said the 
banished envoy to an American friend and fellow 
passenger. And he pointed his cigar at the towers 
and canons of Manhattan fast fading in late autumn 

2 Article by William G. Fitz-Gerald in " The Nineteenth Century 
and After," 



WHY WE ARE FIGHTING 35 

mist. ' Wilson is helpless. The English of his notes 
is impeccable stuff, but there is nothing back of it, 
as you Yankees say. So each remonstrance grows 
weaker, till the world laughs at the United States.' 

" And so saying the ex-ambassador of the Dual 
Monarchy launched an able dissertation upon Amer- 
ican continental immensity, her self-centered and 
often polyglot States, the multitude and looseness 
of her laws and peoples, the danger of dollar stand- 
ards and the sure failure of them in the great ' Day ' 
which the speaker saw ahead for the United States." 

Germany, with all her knowledge of submarines, 
poison gas, and zeppelins, did not know the soul of 
America. She did not know all the heaped-up emo- 
tions of wrath and humiliation that had fired to a 
white heat the souls of the people. She knew the 
law of the jungle but not the law of humanity. 

For nearly three years God has been speaking 
to the American people. At first we could but 
faintly hear his voice. The jingle of gold, the love 
of ease, the jangling voices of the pacifists and the 
hyphenated made poor receivers. But at last the 
divine voice became so loud and insistent that only 
the man whose moral and patriotic ear-drum had 
been pierced failed to hear. We know now if we 
did not know before the message that God has for 
the American people, " Speak unto the children of 
Israel that they go forward." And we go, with a 
picture of martyred Belgium flaming before our 
eyes ; with the cries of men, women, and children 



36 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

who have fallen victims to German under-sea piracy 
ringing in our ears ; with the sobs of outraged and 
maimed Armenian and French maidens and women 
choking in our throats. We go not groaning and 
whining and half-heartedly because we have to go, 
but with clear eyes and full hearts, with the flag 
of humanity floating in the breeze, and rejoicing in 
the day and for the opportunity of striking a blow 
for world freedom and world peace. 

We are fighting for democratic institutions. We 
believe in the words of President Wilson, that " the 
world must be made safe for democracy." We are 
convinced that we shall never have a safe world so 
long as Prussian autocracy is triumphant. 

The fathers lit a torch in this new world. They 
lit it in the agonies and blood of the war for inde- 
pendence. Its light has penetrated to all parts of 
the world. It has inspired the men of France and 
the men of England and the men of Russia to set 
up beacon-lights of liberty and democracy. 

A military caste arose in Prussia that threatened 
to extinguish that light. It was not a democracy; 
it was an army. Its sign and symbol was the 
Krupp gun. Prince Von Billow, a former chan- 
cellor of the Empire, said, in 1914 : " Prussia at- 
tained her greatness as a country of soldiers and 
oflicials, and as such she was able to accomplish the 
work of German union; to this day she is still, in 
all essentials, a state of soldiers and officials." 
Deliberate purpose has kept her so. 



WHY WE ARE FIGHTING 37 

An army that is controlled by a parliament that 
is answerable to the people is not a grave menace 
to liberty, for the masses of the people are uncom- 
promising foes of militarism. The most glorious 
chapters in English history are the chapters which 
deal with the struggle between king and parliament 
over the control of the army, and in that struggle 
it was the parliament that won, though at a consid- 
erable cost of human life. An army that is under 
the supreme control of a monarch may be a terrible 
instrument of tyranny, as all history proves. 

In Germany the army is directly under the con- 
trol of the Kaiser. Bethmann Hollweg, late chan- 
cellor of the German Empire, in a speech delivered 
in the Landtag, January lo, 1914, said, " The dear- 
est desire of every Prussian is to see the king's 
army remain completely under the control of the 
king and not to become the army of parliament." 

That the German emperor takes his position as 
an absolute monarch and a ruler by right divine, 
as seriously as the English Stuart king who lost, 
not only his crown, but also his head because of his 
persistence in attempting to dominate the English 
parliament and people, is evident in the following 
quotations ^ from the speeches and writings of the 
Kaiser : " It is the soldier and the army, not parlia- 
mentary majorities and votes, that have welded the 
German empire together. My confidence rests upon 
the army. 

^Thayer, Quotations Book, "Germany vs. Civilization," pp. 51-53. 



38 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

'' The most important heritage which my illus- 
trious grandfather and father bequeathed to me and 
which I entered upon with joy and pride is the 
army. 

*' Wherever the German eagle has thrust his 
talons into a country, that country is German and 
will remain German. 

" A soldier must not have a will of his own. He 
must have only one will, and that will, mine. 

'' There is only one master in this country ; I am 
he and I will not tolerate another. 

" There is only one law — my law, the law which 
I myself lay down," 

. This army dominated by the Kaiser became a 
national god, and all the resources of science, and 
all the human harvest, and all the brains of diplo- 
mats, writers, and philosophers were consecrated 
to the one end of making that army the most effi- 
cient, the most deadly, and the most dangerous that 
could be produced. 

Europe looked on and trembled. It saw that 
army in recent times wage three wars, all of con- 
quest, and within the short space of seventy years 
humble in the dust, in succession, Denmark, Aus- 
tria, and France. It knew that when the time was 
ripe that great and growing war machine would 
strike a blow for world power. It knew that, if 
Prussian autocracy won out in the struggle, the 
light of liberty would be extinguished. It knew 
that nothing less than European civilization was 



WHY WE ARE FIGHTING 39 

at Stake. That is what President Wilson meant 
when he said that the world must be made safe for 
democracy, for democracy is still an experiment, 
and there is no certainty that a triumphant autoc- 
racy would permit the torch the fathers lit to re- 
main burning even on the American continent. 

That this is a great war for democracy is recog- 
nized even by German writers. Notwithstanding 
the iron censorship we find Maximilian Harden, the 
famous German editor, writing in his paper : " The 
goal of our enemies is democracy and independence 
for every race ripe for freedom. If Germany sees 
blazing over that goal the great celestial sign of 
the times, then peace is reachable to-morrow. Over 
all questions agreement will be achieved easily, but 
if that condition of things for which millions of 
people sigh appears to her to be ignominious, then 
she must fight on until one group conquers and the 
other falls in exhaustion." 

That the forces of democracy are working among 
the German people, and it is not beyond the 
bounds of possibility that the day is not distant 
when the German people will recognize that the 
Allies, in fighting against Prussian autocracy, are 
really fighting for their liberties also, is at least 
suggested in the abuse that is heaped upon democ- 
racy by the Junker press. For example the " Ber- 
liner Neueste Nachrichfen " says * : " The most dan- 
gerous enemy of the German people is democracy. 

* Quoted in "New York Times," Aug. 19, 1917. 



40 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

It is democracy that we shall have to fight when 
our arms have long been at rest, and the far- 
advanced frontiers of the new and greater Germany 
have been secured — in spite of July 19 and its 
Reichstag majority — in a German security peace." 

Autocracy forced this war upon the world to ex- 
terminate democracy both in the German empire 
and in the world at large. At the beginning of the 
war it seemed quite possible that America might 
not be drawn into the conflict. But autocracy has a 
long arm, and its nature is essentially predatory, 
and it was not long before the American people 
felt the heavy hand of oppression reaching across 
the seas to strangle liberty on this continent as well 
as in Europe. 

The world is so small to-day that autocracy and 
democracy cannot live together. This war has dem- 
onstrated the fact that the only adequate way to 
make the world safe for democracy is to destroy 
autocracy, and that is one reason why we are 
fighting. 

We go into this war to defend the sanctity of 
international law, the rights and liberties of small 
nations, and to combat the diabolical doctrine that 
might makes right. 

To what extent German writers, philosophers, 
and historians, such as Bernhardi, Nietzsche, and 
Treitschke, are responsible for this war with its un- 
speakable outrages upon neutral and warring pow- 
ers is difficult to decide. 



WHY WE ARE FIGHTING 4I 

We know that Nietzsche, who has a large fol- 
lowing in Germany, taught the worship of the 
strong man, that he condemned many of the Chris- 
tian virtues, such as pity, as keeping alive organisms 
that ought to perish. Nietzsche writes : " Man re- 
quires that which is worst within him to attain that 
which is best. His worst instincts are the best por- 
tion of his might. . . Man must become better 
and worse. . . ' Here is the new law, O my 
brethren, which I promulgate unto you. Become 
hard. For creative spirits are hard. And you 
must find a supreme blessedness in impressing the 
mark of your hand, in inscribing your will upon 
thousands and thousands, as on soft wax.' " 

In a remarkable book, written by General F. von 
Bernhardi, which is said to be studied by every 
German officer, we have a rejection of all that 
Christianity and civilization have done in a thousand 
years to mitigate the horrors of war. Bernhardi 
teaches ^ that " Might is at once the supreme right, 
and the dispute as to what is right is decided by 
the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically 
just decision since its decisions rest on the very 
nature of things." 

Bernhardi contends, that efforts directed toward 
the abolition of war are not only foolish but abso- 
lutely immoral, and must be stigmatized as un- 
worthy of the human race. He makes a sneering 
reference to the United States which is of special 

'• ■' Germany and the Next War," p. 23. 



42 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

interest in the light of recent history : ® " The United 
States of America, in June, 191 1, championed the 
ideas of universal peace in order to be able to de- 
vote their undisturbed attention to money-making 
and the enjoyment of wealth, and to save the three 
hundred million dollars, which they spent on their 
army and navy. . . If they advance farther on 
that road they will one day pay dearly for such a 
poHcy." 

According to Bernhardi the state is above the 
standard of individual morality. Its acts cannot 
be judged by the standards of individual morality. 
He writes : ^ " The increase of this power is thus 
from this standpoint the first and foremost duty of 
the state.'' 

The German historian, Heinrich Von Treitschke, 
declares : ^ " The small nations have no right of ex- 
istence and ought to be swallowed up." Like Bern- 
hardi, he boldly diffei'entiates the moral obligations 
of the private individual from those of a govern- 
ment charged with the destinies of a nation. He 
writes : ^ " Thus it follows from this that we must 
distinguish between public and private morality. A 
whole series of duties which are obligatory on the 
individual are not to be thought of in any case for 
the state. . . The state is power. For that is the 
truth and he who is not man enough to look the 

* Ibid, pp. 28, 29. 

"^ Ibid, p. 47. 

8 J. P. Bang, " Hurrah and Hallelujah," p. 224. 

^ Heinrich Von Treitschke, " Selections," pp. 28, 32. 



WHY WE ARE FIGHTING 43 

truth in the face ought to keep his hands off 
poHtics." 

The doctrine that the end justifies the means, that 
mihtary necessity knows no law, that the ethics of 
personal conduct do not apply to the acts of states, 
that a nation has no rights except those which she 
is able to defend with her arms, that the weak state 
should be swallowed up* by the strong, is a doctrine 
so frankly pagan that we found it difficult to be- 
lieve that a nation that plumed herself on hen su- 
perior culture would translate the teaching into 
action. But during the course of the war, not once 
but many times, not in the heat of passion, but de- 
liberately with malice aforethought, Germany by 
her deeds has put the sig'n of her approval upon 
this brutal, merciless, and immoral doctrine. 

When anything particularly devilish was done, 
such as the invasion of Belgium, the slaughter of 
helpless non-combatants, the raining of bombs down 
upon unfortified cities, the sinking of the Lusitania, 
the massacre ai the Armenians, the torpedoing of 
unarmed American ships, Germany calmly replied 
to every protest, " It was a military necessity.'* 
That is to say, she recognizes no law but the law 
of the mailed fist. It is the law of the pack, the 
law of brute force, the law that the strong shall 
survive and the weak go to the wall. 

The United States of America could not stand 
for that kind of teaching without playing traitor 
to her whole history as a nation. In 1861 the 



44 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

people of the North said, ** We shall save the weak 
black man and let our strong sons whom- we love 
better than life go to the wall." And out of that 
terrible harvest of death, liberty was born, and the 
fetters fell off the arms and legs, off the minds and 
hearts of the poor, weak, black man. 

Europe, like America, cannot exist half slave and 
half free. We fight for the protection of weak na- 
tions. We fight for the sacredness of. interna- 
tional law. We fight against the. horrible doctrine 
that might makes right and that necessity knows 
no law. We are fighting for the things of the spirit 
against brute merciless force. We are fighting for 
the things we have always fought for. It is a fight 
for liberty, for the rights of those who are too 
weak to defend themselves. We are fighting for 
God, for justice, and for humanity. To such a task 
we can, in the noble language of President Wilson, 
" dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything 
that we are, and everything that we have, with the 
pride of those who know that the day has- come 
when America is privileged to spend her blood and 
her might for the principles that gave her birth and 
the happiness and peace which she has treasured." 



Ill 



IS IT RIGHT FOR A GOOD SAMARITAN TO 
FIGHT? 

It is a debatable question whether one is ever 
justified in taking Hberties with a parable. To 
confess the overt act before committing it may be 
conceded as an extenuating circumstance. 

In the parable, when the Good Samaritan arrived 
on the scene, the robbers had departed, leaving 
the victim naked, wounded, and plundered. Red 
Cross work was the only work open to the Good 
Samaritan, and he performed it so efficiently that 
his name has lived in history. 

But suppose that the Good Samaritan had ar- 
rived at that particular spot on the Jericho road at 
the precise moment the bandits were holding up 
their victim, what would have been his duty under 
that new condition? 

It is conceivable that he might have retired to 
a respectful distance and composed a note to the 
bandits, mildly protesting against their illegal and 
unwarranted course of conduct. Indeed he might 
have found vent for his outraged feelings by writ- 
ing a series of notes, in the spirit of the famous 
Mr. Micawber who, when he was pressed too hard 

45 



46 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

by his creditors, would give them a promissory 
note and exclaim triumphantly to himself, " Well, 
that bill's paid." Would the Good Samaritan have 
discharged his obligations to society if he had writ- 
ten a strong note of protest? 

It is quite possible that the Good Samaritan 
might have reasoned somewhat after this fashion: 
" These robbers evidently understand their business. 
They have developed to a very high degree of ef- 
ficiency the art of making war. They are equipped 
with the most deadly and modern weapons for 
wounding and killing people. If I get into this mix- 
up the probabilities are that I will get hurt; and, 
after all, it is only a Jew they are manhandling, and 
there is no particular love lost between Jews and 
Samaritans. If the Jew had stayed in Jerusalem 
and minded his own business, instead of tramping 
the Jericho road with a pack on his back, thus 
putting temptation directly in the way of these men 
of predatory instincts, he would have escaped all 
this annoyance. It is quite evident that the Jericho 
road is not a safe highway, even for Good Samar- 
itans. It seems to have been declared a war zone. 
I will make for that place that looks good to me 
while the going is still good, and in my bomb-proof 
cellar will pray to my God for the triumph of 
spiritual forces. Meanwhile it will be an act of 
prudence on my part to cultivate a spirit of neutral- 
ity even in thought, so when this unpleasantness is 
over I shall be good friends with everybody, and 



IS IT RIGHT FOR A GOOD SAMARITAN TO FIGHT? 47 

may be called in to arbitrate a settlement of 
peace." 

Or the Good Samaritan might have said : " This 
is none of my business. I am a Good Samaritan, 
not a fighting man. It is unfortunate that men 
should be held up by robbers, but I am in no way 
responsible for the hold-up. It is true that if I 
get into this fight it may mean the defeat of the 
robbers, but the defeat of the robbers means that 
somebody is going to get hurt; and it is against 
my religious convictions either to get hurt myself 
or to hurt anybody else. I will retire to the cool 
shade of yonder tree and compose a speech on 
Peace at any Price; and when the robbers have 
completed the operations upon which they are en- 
gaged, and have ridden several miles away, I will 
render first aid to the wounded man, and perform 
the other duties which devolve upon a Good Samar- 
itan under such distressing circumstances." 

If the Good Samaritan had adopted any one of 
the three policies outlined, would Jesus have said 
to the lawyer, " Go thou, and do likewise " ? 

The word " robber '' may possibly seem a harsh 
term to apply to Germany, but out of her own 
mouth she is condemned as a lawless predatory 
nation. It was for a large place under the sun that 
she prepared for forty years, and when, in defiance 
of her sworn treaties, she sent her troops crashing 
through Belgium on August 4, 19 14, she did it with 



48 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

the public announcement that " necessity knows no 
law." 

The attempt of the German chancellor to palliate 
that crime by referring to her solemn treaty with 
Belgium as a scrap of paper will never be forgotten 
by the world at large. Here it is written in letters 
of fire upon one of the historic documents of the 
war — the letter ^ of the British ambassador at Ber- 
lin, to Sir Edward Grey: " I found the chancellor 
very agitated. His excellency at once began a 
harangue, which lasted about twenty minutes. He 
said that the step taken by his majesty's government 
was terrible to a degree ; just for a word — neutrality, 
a word which in wartime had so often been disre- 
garded — just for a scrap of paper, Great Britain 
was going to make war on a kindred nation, who 
desired nothing better than to be friends with her." 

The best defense that Hugo Miinsterberg could 
put up for that outrage upon a weak and neutral 
nation was this curious plea : ^ " Germany had 
agreed to treat Belguim as a neutral state. . . Bel- 
gium knew exactly that these neutrality treaties 
were not treaties comparable to the contracts of 
private persons. . . Belgium knew that such agree- 
ments are at present not more than a matter of 
international etiquette. Germany could do what it 
did with a clear conscience; it did not violate the 
higher laws of honor." 

1 White Paper, No. i6o. 

2 " The War and America," pp. 183, 185, 



IS IT RIGHT FOR A GOOD SAMARITAN TO FIGHT? 49 

That defense may have been eminently satisfac- 
tory to the German mind, but in the judgment of the 
people of the United States, for whose benefit it 
was written, it damned Germany beyond redemption. 

The story of German atrocities since the war be- 
gan is one of the most horrible that has been writ- 
ten upon the pages of history, since the days of 
Attila the Hun. It has been a deliberate system 
of terrorization, and reveals a strange ignorance of 
the souls of other nations. Theodore Roosevelt 
quotes ^ the comment of the Berlin " Lokal An- 
zeiger" after the sinking of the Lusitania: " We do 
not wish to gain the love of the Americans, but 
we desire to be respected by them. The loss of 
the Lusitania will earn that respect for us more 
than a hundred battles won on land." What Ger- 
many failed to understand was that such outrages, 
instead of cowing the world into abject submission, 
would rouse all self-respecting nations to destroy 
the mad dog that was loose upon the public highway. 

Mr. Root is not a man addicted to extravagant 
language, but in a speech delivered just before going 
to Russia as the head of the American Commission, 
he referred to the barbarism of the German troops 
when, under the pressure of the allied forces, they 
were compelled to withdraw from a part of north- 
ern France, and in leaving they lifted their axes on 
every vine and fruit tree, that will take from ten 
to twenty years to be regrown, killed all the trees 

8 " Fear God and Take Your Own Part," p. i8i. 
D 



50 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

in the forest, poisoned the wells, and last of all 
drove into their camps girls and women between 
fifteen and twenty-five years of age. Mr. Root, 
in calling attention to the fact that these deeds are 
in the face of all international law, says : " The Ger- 
man people are quite outside the group of civilized 
nations. They have scientific efficiency, but in 
morals and law they have the tactics of the Red 
Indian and the naked savages of the South Sea 
Islands." 

In the judgment of the writer a distinction must 
be made between the mercantile trading Germany 
and the official military caste headed by the Kaiser, 
who have been able to cast an evil spell over the 
masses of the people. Lloyd George, like President 
Wilson, has made a distinction between the German 
people and the Prussian militarists. In one of his 
speeches, the premier of Great Britain declared: 
" We are not fighting the German people. The Ger- 
man people are just as much under the heel of the 
Prussian military caste, and more so, thank God, 
than any other nation of Europe. It will be a day 
of rejoicing for the German peasant and artisan 
and trader when the military caste is broken." It 
is not fair in an autocracy, where a few men hold 
supreme power, to judge a great nation by the 
wanton acts of its leaders. Since the war began 
they have been fed on lies, but to-day there are some 
signs that they are beginning to awaken to the real 
issues of the great war, and when they finally get 



IS IT RIGHT FOR A GOOD SAMARITAN TO FIGHT? 5I 

their eyes open, there will be a day of reckoning 
for the Kaiser and the Junkers who have plunged 
the world into this sanguinary struggle. 

To refer to the United States as the Good Samar- 
itan of the parable may be questioned on the ground 
of good taste. Indeed, it may be stated without 
reservation that, during the months when the Amer- 
ican people were simply spectators of the great 
battle for freedom, and the stream of gold con- 
tinued to pour into this country from the nations 
which we instinctively felt were fighting our bat- 
tles, many citizens felt more like the robber in the 
parable than like the Good Samaritan. But without 
pressing the parable too far, and to interpret it in 
the spirit and not in the letter, it is true that for 
nearly three years Uncle Sam performed the duties 
of a Good Samaritan. To the starving women and 
children of Belgium he sent shiploads of wheat and 
other food products, and his efficiency in supervising 
the vast system of distribution has written a very 
brilHant chapter in the history of Good Samaritans. 
He went on tours in Germany, Austria, and Russia 
to inspect prison camps, and as he had an eagle eye 
and was not afraid to speak out in meeting, doubt- 
less his visits greatly improved the condition of 
thousands of unfortunate prisoners. 

But as the months slipped by, the role of a Good 
Samaritan became increasingly difficult to enact. 
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho became so in- 



52 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

fested with bandits, and so many horrible things 
happened on that road, that the Good Samaritan 
could not sleep at nights because there kept ringing 
in his ears the heart-broken cries of the victims of 
the ruffians. 

Finally, the robbers, grown bold or desperate, sent 
word to the Good Samaritan : '' The road from Jeru- 
salem to Jericho is closed to Good Samaritans. If 
you venture on that road, on your own head be the 
consequences." 

And the Good Samaritan, whose left cheek had 
become disfigured because he had turned it so 
frequently to the robber when he had been smitten 
on the right, arose in holy rage, and flung off his 
hospital and relief agency accouterment, and said: 
" The world must be made safe for democracy. 
It may be true that the wicked fly when no man pur- 
sueth, but they make better time when somebody is 
after them with a club. It is up to me to help 
drive the bandits from the Jerusalem road, so that 
the wayfaring man can travel from New York to 
London and from Boston to Berlin without being 
beaten into a jelly by Prussian thugs. I am still a 
Good Samaritan, but I shall carry a rifle along with 
my hot-water bottle, and as faith without works is 
dead, the machine gun will give new emphasis to 
my earnest prayers for peace." 

The future historian will record the fact that 
President Wilson did everything that mortal man 
could do to keep the nation out of war. He suf- 



IS IT RIGHT FOR A GOOD SAMARITAN TO FIGHT? 53 

fered so long and so patiently that many of our 
wisest and greatest men felt that the honor of the 
nation was being dragged in the mire. But the 
President simply waited until the cup of national 
indignation was filled to overflowing, and when the 
time had arrived that he could rally the nation be- 
hind him, he sent that ringing message, which meant 
war, to Congress ; and to all lovers of freedom, jus- 
tice, and humanity the sunshine seemed brighter, 
and the air sweeter, and we held our heads a little 
more erect and our shoulders a little farther back, 
and Old Glory seemed a little more glorious as it 
waved in the breeze, for to maintain neutrality in 
the presence of such colossal crimes against human- 
ity seemed almost like the sin against the Holy 
Ghost. 

What a glorious day it was for the weary, broken 
nations that had been carrying the heavy burden 
in the heat of the day when they learned that the 
Good Samaritan had decided to get busy in police 
operations on the Jericho road. Kipling has writ- 
ten a poem to celebrate that great fact. He puts 
the words in the mouth of the American spirit which 
speaks of the opportunity to " recover the road we 
lost in the drugged and doubting years." Three 
stanzas run: 

But after the fires and the wrath, 

But after searching and pain, 
His mercy opens us a path 

To live with ourselves again. 



54 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

In the gates of death rejoice, 

We see and hold the good, 
Bear witness, earth, we have made 
our choice 

For freedom and brotherhood. 

Then praise the Lord Most High, 
Whose strength has saved us whole, 

Who bade us choose that the flesh 
should die, 
And not the living soul. 

There are certain people in our midst who insist 
that the Good Samaritan should have stood with 
folded arms while the dragon devoured the maiden. 
That nations should live in fraternity, that the 
strong should not oppress the weak, that hate and 
bitterness and strife are evil forces which should 
be cast into the outer darkness, that war is a hideous, 
monstrous thing that should no longer be tolerated 
in a Christian society, is a fair and alluring vision. 

The man who protests against the use of force 
to achieve moral ends fails to recognize that even in 
times of peace we live in a continuous state of war. 
The policeman at the corner is a symbol of the force 
of the community in constant operation against the 
criminal, the discontented, the law-breaker. Every 
court of justice is a declaration of the fact that 
there is a power organized by the state at great 
expense to compel citizens to act justly by one an- 
other. In an ideal world, where all men were domi- 
nated by the law of love, we might be able to dis- 



IS IT RIGHT FOR A GOOD SAMARITAN TO FIGHT? 55 

pense with the services of the policeman, the peni- 
tentiary, and the court of justice ; but so long as evil 
exists and men value the spiritual goods of Hfe more 
highly than life itself, there must be force, and back 
of that force men who are prepared to make even 
the supreme sacrifice for the higher things. 

A nation can be justified in going to war only as 
it adopts the ideals of the policeman. The duty 
of the policeman is to protect society, to defend 
the weak from the attack of the ruthless and the 
unscrupulous. If he bags a criminal with his loot 
he must have no part in the spoils. A nation that 
undertakes police duties must not think of terri- 
torial expansion and indemnities. Can any one 
doubt that the United States has gone into this war 
with pure aims and an unselfish heart? We go to 
perform police duties on the road from Jerusalem to 
Jericho, and to make the world's highway safe 
from the thugs who have held up the wayfaring 
man, stripped him of his goods, terrorized his 
women, and brought sorrow into a million homes. 

This war is a war for freedom, for democracy, 
for international honor, and as a Scotch preacher 
has aptly put it, a war of the nailed hand against 
the mailed fist. It is therefore right for the Good 
Samaritan to fight. Any nation that sets up ideals 
ought to have sufficient back-bone to fight for those 
ideals. Any young man who can read the history 
of this war, with its crimes against women and chil- 
dren, and neutral peoples, and remain unmoved, is 



56 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

not a man, but a lump of dough. The virtue has 
gone out of him. If it be right for the father to 
defend his daughter against the brutal attack of the 
abductor; if it be right for the policeman to protect 
the helpless citizen against the assaults of the high- 
wayman ; if George Washington and Abraham Lin- 
coln are still worthy of a place among the national 
heroes, then it is right for the Good Samaritan to 
fight. For life for us and for our children is hardly 
worth while if it has to be lived under Prussian rule. 

For all we have and are, 

For all our children's fate, 
Rise up and meet the war; 

The Hun is at our gate. 

No easy hopes or lies 

Shall bring us to our goal, 
But iron sacrifice 

Of body, will, and soul. 



IV 
WHY DOESN'T GOD STOP THE WAR? 

** 0^I|, lljat lI|Ou fomtlbcst xtxtb tljc I|8a6ctts, tljat t{|oit 
6j0uli»Est come ho&itt * * » tijitt tl|e itjrttons mag tremble 
at tl|g preaettcel " — r/zc prophet Isaiah, 

For over three years the most horrible, the most 
destructive war in all history has been raging. Into 
the great whirlpool of hate and passion, bloodshed 
and agony, nation after nation has been drawn, until 
to-day there is not a great power on the earth that 
is not struggling for its life in that seething caldron. 
In the battle of the giants the weak powers have 
been trampled under foot, their countries devastated, 
their men, women, and children practically reduced 
to a condition of slavery. The withdrawal of mil- 
lions of men from the peaceable arts of agriculture, 
coupled with the ruthless submarine warfare, has 
resulted in a food famine that is bringing the world 
to the verge of starvation. It is perhaps no exag- 
geration to state that since the war began millions 
of people have perished of hunger. 

Crimes have been committed against women and 
children, against peaceable and inoffensive neutrals, 
that have made us gasp with horror. The slaughter 

57 



58 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

of human life is so great that it baffles the imagina- 
tion. Europe is one vast graveyard, and if a boy 
of fifteen were appointed to review the great pro- 
cession of sightless, disfigured, and maimed men 
as they file by in single line, he would be an old 
man before the last one of that pathetic procession 
had passed. 

It is a question who have paid the highest price 
in the great war, the men who have answered the 
call of country, or the wives, mothers, and sweet- 
hearts, who can only wait and pray and weep for 
those who may never return. 

We know. 

That not a shot comes blind with death, 
And not a stab of steel is pressed 

Home, but first it tore, 
And entered first some woman's breast. 

Into the fiery crucible of war have gone and are 
going the accumulated savings of a half-century of 
peace. The billions of dollars spent upon engines 
of destruction were sufficient to abolish poverty 
from the earth, to clean up every slum district in 
every city of the world, and to make the wilderness 
blossom like the rose. Beyond the lifetime of any 
of us who are living to-day, Europe will be stagger- 
ing under the burden of war debts. 

War is hell — not the Universalist brand of cane- 
bottomed chairs, but the hell of agony set forth by 
Jonathan Edwards and Billy Sunday. War means 



WHY DOESN T GOD STOP THE WAR? 59 

the butchery of human life, the slaughter of inno- 
cent people, the breakdown of the family relation. 
It means the outrage of women, the starvation of 
little children, the destruction of great cities with 
their monuments of art. It means the emerging 
from the thin crust of civilization of the savage, 
the brutal, the lustful, and the fiendish. It means 
tears and blood, anguish, martyrdom, and heart- 
break. War is hell, and if there were any stronger 
term, one would not hesitate in using it. 

The question, Why doesn't God stop the war ? has 
been upon the lips of multitudes since this awful 
carnage began. From a thousand pulpits, and from 
ten thousand homes, the throne of grace has been 
bombarded with prayers for peace. 

If God be all-powerful, the King of kings and 
Lord of lords, the Governor of the universe who 
guides the destinies of nations and of men, why 
doesn't he rend the heavens and come down, that 
the nations may tremble at his presence? If God 
be a God of love, if human sufifering moves him to 
pity, if the wail of a woman, the sob of a strong 
man in his agony, the pathetic cry of a starving 
baby, makes any appeal to his heart of compassion, 
why doesn't he stop the war? 

What was Cod doing when the victims of the 
Lusitania battled in the billows and sank one by 
one to the sea-floor of the Atlantic? Where was 
God when the Turks maimed, tortured, outraged, 



6o THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

and killed a million helpless Armenians? Was he 
sleeping, or on a journey, when the tides of battle 
receded, leaving so many thousands of French 
maidens and women stranded upon enemy country, 
while he to all appearances heard not their screams 
of terror as they struggled in the lustful embrace of 
brutal and drunken soldiers ? Is God indifferent to 
the things which give us sleepless nights and fire 
our souls with a passion to make any sacrifice of 
life and property to banish such hellish evils from 
the earth? Does war, with all its cruelties, its 
horrors, its unspeakable things, mean nothing more 
to him than the buzzing of flies upon the window- 
pane ? Why does he " sit in the heavens and do 
nothing," to use a phrase from Carlyle? Is God 
the only great Neutral that is left in the world to- 
day, who simply watches, and sees no distinction 
between the act of the soldier who lays down his 
life in carrying a wounded soldier to the rear, and 
the soldier who, in mere wantonness, drives his 
bayonet through a helpless man lying upon the 
battle-field? If he cares, why doesn't he rend the 
heavens and come down that the nations may 
tremble at his presence ? 

These are terrible questions — questions which 
sting and burn and stab — questions which are thrust 
upon us and demand an answer. It is not surprising 
that some who are unbelievers have been confirmed 
in their unbelief, that others have found their 
foundations crumbling from under them, that not a 



WHY doesn't god STOP THE WAR? 6 1 

few have said : " There is no moral government of 
the world. We are simply left to ourselves, and 
therefore force, brutal, blind, non-moral force, rules 
everywhere." 

These are not new questions. Read the book of 
Job, the Psalms, the Prophets, and you will find 
that the writers were assailed with the same tor- 
turing, staggering doubts. They lived in stormy 
times and faced brutalities and horrors even greater 
than the 'World is facing to-day. In three different 
psalms these words occur : " They continually say 
unto me, Where is thy God? " " Wherefore should 
the heathen say. Where is their God ? " " Where- 
fore should the nations say, Where is now their 
God?" 

God did not intervene when the Assyrians came 
down like a wolf on the fold and left Jerusalem 
a heap of smoking ruins and carried what was left 
of the people away into captivity. God did not in- 
tervene when, in the year 172 B. C., Antiochus 
Epiphanes sacked Jerusalem, massacred or enslaved 
large numbers of the inhabitants, and crucified 
women with their infant children strangled and 
hanging about their necks. 

All of this is a hard saying and most depressing, 
but surely it is better to face facts than to live in 
a fool's paradise. A man who refuses to face a 
fact, because it happens to be an ugly fact, is either 
a coward or a Christian Scientist. It is better to live 
in a world of realities, however painful those real- 



62 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

ities are, than to play the game of make-believe in 
a world of illusions. 

Charles Robinson ^ relates this incident : " A boy, 
whom the writer of the article knew, said one day 
to a missionary, with whom he was staying in Cen- 
tral Africa, 'Did up-up (God) make me?' * Yes,* 
was the reply. * Did up-iip make the huzz-hiizs 
(mosquito) ? ' ' Yes.' He waited a moment and 
then said, ' Why does up-up let the buss-huss eat 
me ? ' " The question put by the African boy is 
really the same problem we are considering. Why 
doesn't God stop the war ? 

It may be granted that God is in no way respon- 
sible for this awful catastrophe of war that has 
involved the world. 

The sober judgment of the neutral nations is that 
this war was made in Germany. There is docu- 
mentary evidence to show how reluctant Russia and 
France and England were to enter into this conflict. 
Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, ex- 
hausted every art of diplomacy to have the ques- 
tions at issue referred to a court of arbitration. But 
Prussia wanted war. She believed that her hour 
had struck. For fifty years she had been training 
for that hour. She knew how deadly and efficient 
her armies were, and how wofully unprepared the 
forces that would line up against her. When the 

* " Our Sons Have Shown Us God," " Contemporary Review," May, 
1917. 



WHY doesn't god STOP THE WAR? 63 

great military machine started on the way to Paris 
it was confidently believed by the Kaiser and the 
general staff that they were on the road to world 
wealth and world power. 

If Germany had won the battle of the Marne 
the war would probably have been over in six 
months, and as Prussian culture had conquered Ger- 
many, so it would have conquered the world. 

This war was not the result of any outburst of 
midsummer madness ; it was not any act of God im- 
posed upon the world from without; it was not 
that some obscure apocalyptic passages in the book 
of Daniel or the Revelation might be fulfilled; it 
was not a scourge of God upon mankind because 
men had desecrated his Sundays, neglected his sacra- 
ments, and turned from the straight and narrow 
road of orthodoxy to follow the wandering lights of 
the new theology. 

This war arose out of the conviction of a large 
group of German warlords, philosophers, and theo- 
logians, that Germany was an elect nation, appointed 
to impose her type of civilization upon inferior races 
and nations and to set the flag " Germany over all " 
flying in every land that looks into God's blue sky. 
One of the leaders of the association known as 
Young Germany wrote ^ in their official organ for 
October, 1913 : " War is the noblest and holiest ex- 
pression of human activity. For us too the glad 
great hour of battle will strike. Still and deep in 

2 J, p. Bang, "Hurrah and Hallelujah," p. 212. 



64 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

the German heart must live the joy of battle and 
the longing for it. Let us ridicule to the utmost the 
old women in breeches who fear war and deplore it 
as cruel or revolting. No; war is beautiful. Its 
august sublimity elevates the human heart beyond 
the earthly and the common. In the cloud palace 
above sit the heroes, Frederick the Great and 
Bliicher, and all the men of action — the great em- 
peror, Moltke, Bismarck are there as well, but not 
the old women who would take away our joy in war. 
When here on earth a battle is won by German arms 
and the faithful dead ascend to heaven, a Potsdam 
lance-corporal will call the guard to the door, and 
old Fritz, springing from his golden throne, will 
give the command to present arms. This is the 
heaven of Young Germany." 

It was such teaching that permeated Germany 
like the poison gas which they send on its death-deal- 
ing mission into the trenches of the Allies, and 
that prepared the way for this world catastrophe. 
Therefore we can at least absolve almighty God 
from all responsibility in bringing on this world 
war. It was made in Germany ; it smacks not of the 
divine, but of the diabolical. 

It is a fair proposition that God could not stop 
the war without abandoning his great experiment 
in endowing man with freedom of action. 

God took fearful chances when he gave man the 
power to choose between good and evil. There was 



WHY doesn't god STOP THE WAR? 65 

always the possibility that man might turn from 
the good and deliberately select the evil. 

Men cry, " Oh that thou wouldest rend the 
heavens and come down." It is a prayer for God 
to impose his will upon the world, to coerce men 
into goodness, to override their judgments. But that 
means that man is to be no longer a responsible 
being. It means the degradation of man into an 
automaton. 

God could convert the world into an Eden, and 
bloodthirsty, revengeful, ambitious, and selfish men 
into seraphs and angels; but he could not do it 
without making puppets of us all. God could not 
stop the war, because in a moral universe man has 
the power to choose; and one nation at least has 
deliberately chosen war as a way to a large place 
under the sun, and until they awake from that evil 
dream, war must continue with all its heart-break 
and horror, the innocent suffering with the guilty. 
Human freedom stands in the way of any arbitrary 
act of divine intervention. 

God could not stop the war without interfering 
with his great principle, that in a moral universe 
men shall reap what they sow. 

God does not Intervene in the lives *of individuals 
when they adopt some course of action which is 
bound to bring suffering upon themselves and per- 
haps upon others. He leaves them alone to work 
out their own salvation. They must learn by ex- 
perience. 

E 



66 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

The writer knows a boy who, when he was a 
little fellow, used to watch with the most intense 
interest his father in the act of shaving. He had 
been warned not to touch the razor, but when he 
arrived at the age of five years, he evidently felt 
that he had arrived at that physical period of de- 
velopment which called for the use of a tonsorial 
instrument. So he shut himself up in the bathroom, 
stropped the razor, or, to use exact language, 
razored the strop, applied the lather to his face, and 
proceeded to shave himself. When he came down- 
stairs the blood was running from half a dozen cuts. 
It was not necessary to warn him again that a razor 
is a very dangerous instrument in the hands of a 
small boy. 

When a man, or a nation, in defiance of the com- 
mandments of God, seizes some dangerous weapon 
and proceeds to use it, there is no voice from heaven, 
there is no fiat of the Almighty vi^hich compels him 
to drop it. He is permitted to go on his way with- 
out, any intervention. But the judgments of God, 
though slow, are sure. No man or nation can break 
the laws of humanity and justice and escape suf- 
fering. 

It is not true that Germany is the only sinner 
among the nations. Not one of the warring peo- 
ples can pose as a saint. There is good reason v^^hy 
all of us should beat our breasts and cry, " God 
be merciful to me a sinner." But it was Germany 
that seized the razor, and in cutting others she has 



WHY doesn't god STOP THE WAR? 67 

inflicted terrible wounds upon herself; and it may 
be that, when the blood finally stops flowing and 
the nations get around the council table and see the 
deep and unsightly scars made by that keen and 
dangerous instrument, they will decide that war is 
a razor that must henceforth forever be kept under 
lock and key. 

We have been discussing this subject on the as- 
sumption that God does not intervene in human af- 
fairs. That is true of intervention in an arbitrary 
external sense. But in a very real and vital way 
God is continually intervening. There is a divine 
spirit working in the hearts of men. 

Not many years ago slavery was regarded as a 
natural and righteous institution. To-day slavery has 
been abolished in every part of the world. Why? 
Because of the Spirit of God moving in the hearts 
of men. Not many years ago there was little or no 
sentiment against the liquor traffic. To-day it has 
been placed under the ban, and is struggling for its 
very life in every country of the world. Why? 
Because of the Spirit of God moving in the hearts 
of men. In former times men never dreamed of 
apologizing for war. They exulted, they gloried in 
it, and if it were not as destructive as modern war- 
fare, that was not the fault of those who engaged 
in it. As Shailer Mathews aptly expressed it, the 
spirit was willing, but the ammunition and trans- 
portation facilities were weak. To-day war is under 



68 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

the ban like the Hquor traffic. Germany is an out- 
cast among the nations because of the conviction 
that she, more than any other nation, is responsible 
for the conflict. We are actually witnessing nations 
going to war for the sake of peace. Militarism has 
received a knock-out blow, and the time is at hand 
when the peace dream of the Hebrew prophet will 
be realized. Why? Because of the Spirit of God 
moving in the hearts of men. In that sense God 
is intervening to stop the war. 



V 
THE CALL OF THE NATION 

" ^MetljmkB ^ stt m mg ittmh a xwblB mtb putssant 
natmit, rnusiitg hitvsBii like a strong man irfter sUep, ixnh 
sl|akmg {|er tn&mcible locks ; metl^tnka ^ ste i|cr as an 
eagb melxjtttg ijcr nttgljtg goutii, anh ktnbltng {|er un- 
basslch cgES at tl|e full mibhaw beam." — Milton. 

Lord Roberts, one of England's greatest soldiers, 
who died in the early months of the great war, at a 
crowded meeting in Manchester, in 1912, delivered 
a speech which created a sensation in every capital 
of Europe. It closed with a solemn warning ad- 
dressed to his fellow countrymen : " Arm, and pre- 
pare to quit yourselves like men, for the time of your 
ordeal is at hand." Roberts knew, as did other 
great Biritish leaders, that Germany's hour for 
world conquest was about to strike. 

But England, threatened with civil war in Ire- 
land because of the refusal of Protestant Ulster to 
submit to Home Rule, which Ulster believed was 
only another phrase for Roman rule, menaced by 
a class struggle which had already cost the lives 
of many men, harassed by the violent acts of the 
militant wing of the Woman Suffrage Party, filled 

69 



70 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

with idealists who insisted that the conscience of 
the world had outgrown war and that the money 
spent on the army and navy should be diverted to 
schemes of social amelioration — England refused to 
take Roberts seriously. 

Then came the declaration of war with all the 
horrible, unspeakable things which have happened 
since that time. What Lord Roberts said to the 
English people two years before the great war 
began is a fitting message to the American people 
at the present crisis : " Arm, and prepare to quit 
yourselves like men, for the time of your ordeal is 
at hand." 

For nearly three years we have been occupying 
reserved seats on the grand-stand, watching the 
greatest war spectacle of all history. To-day the 
nation is out in the dust and agony and blood of the 
common field, and the time of our ordeal has come. 

The first imperative call that comes to the nation 
to-day is, America, awake, and prepare ! 

We have gone into this war with the holiest and 
purest motives. In the words of our President: 
'' We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no 
conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities 
for ourselves, no material compensation for the 
sacrifice we shall freely make. We go to fight for 
the things we have always carried nearest our hearts, 
for democracy, for the right of those who submit 
to authority to have a voice in their own govern- 



THE CALL OF THE NATION 7I 

ment, for the rights and liberties of small nations, 
and for the ultimate peace of the world." Such 
an objective commends itself to the American soul. 

But however pure our motives and worthy our 
ends, something more is necessary. This is no 
comic-opera war. It cannot be won on paper. We 
shall never defeat Germany with our mouths. We 
must back up our ideals with something that can 
bite. We must awaken to the fact that by the act 
of our representatives at Washington we are en- 
gaged in war, and not in any international Marathon 
race ; that our interests to-day in the world struggle 
are as great as those of France and England who are 
slowly bleeding to death; that if by some unhappy 
combination of circumstances England or France 
should collapse, we would stand a mighty good 
chance of seeing German forces landing on our 
coasts and teaching our men, women, and children 
some lessons in German culture that the people of 
Belgium and northern France learned at tremendous 
cost. Is it not time for some of us to quit our 
trifling and dawdling and fairly face the music of 
our battle? 

Herman Hagedorn, in a poem published in " The 
Metropolitan," entitled " The Riders," pictures the 
men who have died for American freedom rising out 
of their graves and riding through the land with the 
bugle call, " Awake, Awake, Meet at the Common, 
The World's at Stake." The last two stanzas are 
especially fine : 



"^2 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

On the highways they ride, our fathers, 

They knock at our doors in the night. 
Have you no ear for justice? 

Have you no hands for the right? 
Up from your beds, you dawdlers, 

Say not we died in vain. 
Out of the rusty scabbard 

Whip the spirit again. 

The ghosts are not an army 

With swords and gleaming gun, 
They are riders like the riders 

Who rode to Lexington. 
And every sash they rattle. 

And every door they shake, 
And to every goal-forgetful soul, 

They cry, " Craven, Awake ! " 

The call of the nation is to increase our food 
supplies and to suppress all forms of national waste. 

For the first time in centuries the nations of the 
world are threatened with famine. According to 
Henry Clews, in his weekly report of the financial 
world dated August i8, 191 7: "The world's food 
situation is more serious than generally appreciated. 
Destruction of life, of wealth, and of commodities 
in Europe has lessened food production in various 
parts of the world, while the difficulties of transpor- 
tation aggravated the serious shortage in nearly all 
lines of animal and vegetable food." If Am.erica 
can solve the food problem of the Allies and the 
transportation of the food, Germany is defeated as 
sure as there is a sun in the heavens. 



THE CALL OF THE NATION 73 

The man with the hoe is as important to-day 
as the man with the machine gun, and the bHsters 
on the hands of ten thousand amateur gardeners who 
have sprung to their spades and rakes overnight are 
honorable scars for which no apologies are neces- 
sary. If you have a back -yard and wish to serve your 
country, buy a spade and dig in. A patriot is a man 
who is willing to convert his beautiful lawn into a 
potato patch, and the man who gets down on his 
knees to weed his tomatoes is offering a very beau- 
tiful and appropriate prayer for home and country. 

Mr. Herbert Hoover, the head of the Food Com- 
mission, has started a great campaign of food con- 
servation and food control. He did not hesitate to 
tell the members of the Senate and Congress that 
food speculators have been robbing the people of 
fifty million dollars monthly, and that the flour 
which has been fourteen dollars a barrel on the aver- 
age, ought not to have been more than nine dollars 
a barrel. In this food crisis we have a right to ask 
of our representatives at Washington the summary 
punishment of all men who are seeking for private 
gain to corner the food products of our country. 
These men may be very influential citizens, may 
wear an American flag on the lapel of their coats, 
and may be very ardent in their expressions of 
loyalty, but if it be correct, as was recently testi- 
fied before the Federal grand jury at Chicago, that 
food brokers and speculators have been making a 
profit out of food supplies of from twenty-five to 



74 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

two hundred per cent, then it is true that such men 
are fighting the battles of the Kaiser as truly as any 
of his soldiers who have been decorated with the 
Iron Cross, and the proper place for such disloyal 
citizens is the penitentiary. 

Mr. Hoover, in the name of the President, calls 
upon us to eliminate all forms of national waste. 
Lloyd George did not hesitate to tell the English 
people that they were fighting three enemies: the 
German army, the German submarine warfare, and 
the English liquor traffic. One of the compensations 
of the great war is the fact that it has forced the 
nations involved in the struggle to conserve their re- 
sources, and has brought new and stringent legis- 
lation against that traffic which is responsible for 
the waste of so much money and manhood. Russia 
took the advanced step of totally suppressing the 
sale of vodka. The greater part of Canada is 
dry, and in France and England restrictions have 
been placed on the sale of all intoxicating liquors. 

In these days when the shortage of food has 
become a world problem, nation-wide prohibition 
has become a question of national self-preserva- 
tion. According to statistics supplied by the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, during the fiscal year ending 
June, 1916, 68,439,849 bushels of barley, corn, rye, 
oats, wheat, and other cereals were used in the 
manufacture of fermented liquors, 39,341,566 
bushels of grain were used for distilled spirits, 117,- 
143,205 pounds of grape-sugar, hops, and other 



THE CALL OF THE NATION 75 

material were used for fermented liquors, and 154,- 
885,086 gallons of molasses and glucose were used 
for fermented liquors and distilled spirits. 

A dry zone around the military camps to protect 
our sons from an enemy worse than war is an ex- 
cellent and necessary measure; but a more excel- 
lent measure is to put a dry zone around the whole 
of the United States. In a world threatened by 
starvation, food is too precious to be rotted by the 
hundreds of thousands of bushels, simply for the 
sake of the alcohol that comes from putrefaction and 
decay. Leaving the moral side out of considera- 
tion, and viewing it on no higher ground than an 
economic war emergency measure, one of the most 
insistent calls of the nation is for the enactment of 
national prohibition. 

The call of the nation is the ancient call of sacri- 
fice. 

That call comes to young and old, to rich and 
poor — ^to all alike. If you are exempt from the 
call of service, and have no sons to offer your coun- 
try in her hour of need, then thank God you have 
at least the privilege of paying taxes and thus mak- 
ing it possible for other sons to go. 

Two men met on the public street, and one said 
to the other, " Well, I see we have got to pay an 
income tax," and his voice was about as cheerful 
as that of an undertaker who is bidding the friends 
of the departed to step up and take the last look; 



76 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

and after he had advanced some reasons why the tax 
should have started on incomes a Httle higher than 
the one he was receiving, his friend said to him, 
'' Perhaps you are planning to enlist," and before 
he had hardly finished his sentence the man replied, 
" Oh no, I am too old." " But what about your 
sons ? " And his face became almost as cheerful as 
he made answer, " Oh, they are too young." 

Then his friend said to him, " Do you not think 
that, in a world where millions of people are mak- 
ing the supreme sacrifice for human freedom, you 
are getting off mighty easy if your only contribution 
is the few dollars it will cost you in increased taxa- 
tion." 

There should be but scant sympathy and little 
patience for the man in comfortable circumstances 
who is groaning and grumbling because war is 
going to add a few dollars to his tax bill. If 
through selfishness or thoughtlessness you have been 
inclined to lift up your voice against the impending 
war taxes, quit it, and when the tax bill arrives 
welcome it as you would a " raise "of salary, whistle 
the Star Spangled Banner, and rejoice that there 
are more ways of killing Prussian militarism than 
by pulling the trigger of a gun. 

To the young men of our nation there comes this 
insistent call to , sacrifice and, if need be, to die 
for the common good. Before the war it was 
claimed by many writers that man had become 
enervated through ease and luxury, that the old 



THE CALL OF THE NATION T7 

heroic fiber had been atrophied, that modern civiliza- 
tion had destroyed the old frontier spirit of heroic 
adventure. 

But the war has dispelled that illusion. It has 
proved that man to-day in his willingness to take 
the most desperate chances, to die for the sake of 
ideals, is in no way inferior to men of former ages. 

Here is a letter dated '' Somewhere in France," 
and signed '' Dean Rogers." Because it is typical 
of the spirit of so many boys who are fighting in 
the trenches, a few paragraphs are quoted : 

*'The job of scout has been doped out to me, 
and with it a lot of excitement. Every night we go 
out into ' No Man's Land,' and crawl around be- 
tween the lines in the shell-holes and mud, listening 
for Fritz and his doings. . . Lots of narrow shaves 
these days. Got hit twice last night by flying 
shrapnel, but not hard enough to cut through my 
clothing. You can see his old ' rum jars ' coming, 
and keep your eye on them like a baseball fly, and 
judge it while in the air. If you judge correctly, 
all's well; if not, you are liable to lose almost as 
good a game as baseball, hey? Mother, please don't 
worry about me, I am just letting things go as 
they happen and seeing where it will take me. My 
life is in the strongest of all hands, and if it is 
His will for me to pass over, why it is O. K. A 
fellow gets to take things as they come. We see 
so many slip out that if your number is on a shell, 



2^ THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

why take it and that's all. I'd a darn sight rather 
pass out here doing my bit than be in those shirker's 
shoes in Canada." 

It is the letter of a boy well known to the writer, 
who three years ago was only worrying how he could 
pass his examinations in the high school and bat 
a home run for the team when there happened to be 
three men on bases and two men out. Now he is 
facing death every day and perhaps even now is 
lying in an unknown grave, somewhere in France. 

The call to-day is for men of courage and the 
sacrificial temper, men like Dean Rogers, who will 
not shrink in the hour of danger, men who will 
give their heart's blood for humanity and democracy. 

The call of the nation is to every man, woman, and 
child of the nation. This war is distinguished from 
other wars in the fact that it is a war of nations and 
not simply armies. The men and women employed 
in the munition factories, the people who dig in the 
back-yard gardens, the farmers, the bankers who 
direct our financial operations, if you please, Sister 
Sue knitting stockings for the soldiers, and all that 
vast organized Red Cross and relief work which 
Sister Sue symbolizes — all are fighting as truly as 
the soldiers in the trenches. 

We must go into this war a united people, and 
we shall come out of it like steel that has been tem- 
pered by fire. 



THE CALL OF THE NATION 79 

Kipling tells a story of '' The Ship that Found 
Herself." It is a description of a ship on her 
maiden voyage, when every part of the ship, beam 
and brace, rod and piston seemed to be complaining 
and grumbling — a ship divided against herself. But 
a great storm arose, and then it seemed as if all 
parts of the ship drew together. The discordant 
sounds ceased, and the ship met the crisis of the 
storm triumphantly. 

The American ship of state has had a like experi- 
ence during these past months. The officers have 
not always carried out the commands of the captain, 
and there has been not a little grumbling and com- 
plaining on the part of the crew. The passengers 
have criticized the captain; what they have said 
concerning some of the chief officers would not 
look proper in a Sunday School quarterly. The 
people on the east side of the ship thought the cap- 
tain had inscribed upon his compass the motto 
" Safety First," and the people on the west side of 
the ship were sure that the captain was one of 
those marine scorchers who would surely drive the 
vessel upon the rocks. In addition, there was a 
number of professional " stay-at-home-at-any price '* 
people, who claimed that the only way to have a 
safe voyage was to keep the ship in a dry-dock 
and to say " Thank you, sir " for every insult 
that was handed across by any pirate that rose up 
above the horizon. 

For nearly three years we had been sailing in 



8o THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

troubled waters, and Kipling's ship never groaned 
more than the American ship of state. But to-day 
we are out in the storm. The wind is blowing a 
gale. The heavens are black with clouds. But the 
discordant voices are becoming less discordant; the 
sound of the pacifist is low; and where disloyalty 
once shouted on the housetop, it now whispers in the 
closet. All true men are asking, " What service 
can I render ? " and with the slogan, " Stand by the 
Captain," the American ship is finding herself. 

The call that rises high above all other calls is that 
of sacrifice. It was perhaps nothing more than a 
coincidence that the joint resolution of Congress 
declaring a state of war was signed by the President 
on Good Friday. It is the call of Calvary that the 
nation is hearing to-day, the old call to go out and 
suffer for world freedom. Therefore, " Arm, and 
prepare to quit yourselves like men, for the time of 
your ordeal is at hand." 



VI 

THE SWORD OF CHRIST 

^^'^lllnk not tijat (3f am caxae to scitb p^jire tm tl|« 
cartel; ^ came wot ia stx\h peace, but a sfoorb." 

— /esus Christ. 

It is perhaps one of the minor compensations of 
the great war, that it has added a number of new 
words to the vocabulary of the plain man. One of 
the words that has become a part of the current 
coin is " pacifist." But though the word has be- 
come a very familiar headHne upon our newspapers, 
it is employed in such a variety of senses that it may 
describe the gentle Quaker, with his hatred of all 
forms of compulsion, the Tolstoyan non-resistant, 
and the speaker who at a meeting of the Federated 
Union for Democracy held recently in New York 
shouted amid great applause, " Peace on earth, good 
will to men, and hanging the food speculator on 
the nearest lamp-post will bring us nearer to social 
justice every hour." 

Under the flag of pacifism march the religious 

objector who interprets the commands, " Thou shalt 

not kill," " Resist not him that is evil," in a narrow 

literalistic sense, the orthodox socialist, the philo- 

F 8i 



82 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

sophic anarchist, the man who believes in war, but 
not in America's participation in this war on the 
side of the AlHes because of his pro-German sym- 
pathies, and a certain group of young college men 
who are respectfully called " idealistic intellectuals " 
by one writer, but who, according to Mr. Roosevelt, 
are preaching the doctrine of international coward- 
ice, and are unfitting themselves for any career 
more manly than that of a nurse-maid. 

For the religious objector with his hatred of 
the stark barbarism of war, who believes that no 
weapon of violence can be an instrument of love, and 
who finds in Jesus of Nazareth the supreme inspira- 
tion to conscientious objection, we can have con- 
siderable respect. In these days when passions run 
high, it may require just as high a degree of courage 
to bear witness against war, and against universal 
military service, as actually to face the possibilities 
of death upon the battle-field. It is unfortunate 
for the conscientious objector that he should have 
as bedfellows the coward, the slacker, the pro- 
German, and the man who uses the sheep's clothing 
of pacifism to disguise his wolfish hatred of the 
ideals for which the Allies are fighting. It ought to 
be possible to provide some alternative form of ser- 
vice that would not compel the conscientious ob- 
jector to violate his conscience. Mine-sweeping 
might provide one such form of service, for its 
object is to save and not to destroy life. It is true, 
that mine-sweeping is very dangerous work, but 



THE SWORD OF CHRIST 83 

that would not be an objection to one who is willing 
to suffer for conscience' sake. It would also be a 
real test of the sincerity of the men who are claim- 
ing exemption on conscientious grounds. 

The religious objector, with his moral protest 
against war, his refusal to use physical constraint, 
even though freedom perish and his country is 
ravished by the invader, his appeal to the Bible 
and to Christian ethics as a justification of his re- 
fusal to participate in war, his somewhat contemp- 
tuous references to militaristic ministers of the 
gospel of good will who have surrendered to the 
Red God Mars and betrayed the Prince of Peace 
into the hands of his enemies, has awakened a fresh 
interest in the teachings of the Bible on the rights 
and wrongs of war. 

The candid pacifist must admit that there are few 
passages to be found in the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures that support his position. Even the command- 
ment, " Thou shalt not kill," which has been used 
so freely by pacifists for propagandist purposes, is 
a part of a code which elsewhere commands that 
men shall be killed if proved guilty of certain speci- 
fied offenses. The heroes of the Old Testament 
story for the most part are men of war, and the 
unknown writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, al- 
though an ardent disciple of Jesus, has so little of 
the spirit of the pacifist that it is largely the names 
of soldiers that he enrolls upon the calendar of 
fame. That a war for righteousness met with his 



84 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

hearty approval is evident in the passage (Heb. 
II : 32-34), "And what shall I more say? for 
the time will fail me, if I tell of Gideon, Barak, 
Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the 
prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, 
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped 
the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, 
escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were 
made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight 
armies of aliens." George Hodges has reminded ^ 
us that when Ulfilas, the apostle of the Goths, 
translated the Bible into the language of the people, 
he omitted the books of Samuel and Kings because 
there is so much fighting in them. He feared that 
his belHgerent countrymen would find these books 
more interesting than the Sermon on the Mount. 

However, it is not so much upon the Old Testa- 
ment as upon the example and teachings of Jesus 
that the pacifist depends to maintain his position 
as a conscientious objector. 

Was not Jesus the Prince of Peace? Did not 
the angels sing at his nativity, " Glory to God in 
the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men " ? 
Did he not himself say to the multitude, " Blessed 
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the 
children of God "? Is he not pictured as the Good 
Shepherd, placid, gentle, who laid down his life for 
the sheep? Did he not lay this command upon 
his followers : " Resist not him that is evil ; but 

1 " Religion in a World of War." 



THE SWORD OF CHRIST 85 

whosoever smiteth thee on the right cheek, turn to 
him the other also; and if any man would go to 
law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have 
thy cloak also"? Did he not leave as a legacy to 
the disciples the, benediction of peace, " Peace I 
leave with you, my peace I give unto you " ? 

The only answer that we can give to these ques- 
tions propounded by the pacifists is an answer of 
affirmation. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. His life 
was so graced with gentleness that even little chil- 
dren found a refuge in his arms. When he was 
reviled, he reviled not again; and in almost the 
last glimpse we get of the great Sufferer, he is on 
a cross surrounded by a jeering Jerusalem rabble, 
and looking away over the wagging heads of the 
mocking mob into the shadowed sky of the eternal 
heavens, he is praying, " Father, forgive them, they 
know not what they do." 

There are few higher authorities in New Testa- 
ment teaching than Charles Foster Kent. In a 
book recently published,^ he discusses the doctrine 
of non-resentment as taught by Jesus. He writes : 
" Jesus* oft-discussed teaching regarding non-re- 
sistance is but a dramatic and hyperbolic illustration 
of his law of love. His aim was to free his fol- 
lowers absolutely from the older and still prevalent 
rule of force, whose motive power was anger, or a 
spirit of revenge. Tolstoy and certain other mod- 
ern pacifists have interpreted this passage with a 

- " The Social Teachings of the Prophets and Jesus," pp. 207, 208. 



86 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

blind literalism which has obscured its real mean- 
ing. . . Obviously the passage must be interpreted 
in the light of Jesus' other acts. No one could be 
more stern than was he in his denunciation of the 
hypocritical Pharisees, and in his open rebuke and 
attacks directed against the grafting high priests. 
In most cases, as experience has amply demon- 
strated, non-resistance prompted by good will is the 
most potent agency in disarming aggressive force. 
No true Christian citizen will hesitate to use it to 
the uttermost. At the same time he must be loyal 
to the highest demands of the Golden Rule. If 
non-resistance will not disarm the unprincipled ag- 
gressor, this law may sometimes call for the dis- 
cipline of force." 

^^ There is another side to the character of Jesus 
that pacifists strangely overlook, and that is his 
keen sense of justice, his moral indignation in the 
presence of wrongs, his hatred of shams. The 
wooing note is not the only note to be heard in 
the Gospels. 

While Jesus never resorted to force for his own 
defense, he did not hesitate to employ force to 
defend the rights of others when all other means 
had failed. Mr. Roosevelt's reputation has been 
made in other fields of thought than that of biblical 
interpretation, but he is in line with the best exe- 
getical thought on the subject when he writes ^ con- 
cerning the cleansing of the temple : " When the 

3 " Fear God and Take Your Own Part," p. 26, 



THE SWORD OF CHRIST 87 

Saviour saw the money-changers in the temple, he 
broke the peace by driving them out. At that 
moment peace could have been obtained readily 
enough by the simple expedient of keeping quiet 
in the presence of wrong. But instead of preserving 
peace at the expense of righteousness the Saviour, 
armed with a scourge of cords, drove the money- 
changers from the temple. Righteousness is the 
end, and peace a means to the end, and sometimes 
it is not peace but war, which is the proper means 
to achieve the end." 

In the Gospel of Mark (3 : 1-6) we have an 
account of Jesus entering a synagogue on the Sab- 
bath Day and finding before him a man with a 
withered hand. The Pharisees, who were waiting 
an opportunity to bring some charge against the 
Master that they might destroy him, watched him 
narrowly. And Jesus said unto them, " Is it law- 
ful on the sabbath day to do good or to do harm, 
to save a life or to kill ? " And " they held their 
peace," And Mark tells us that Jesus, being grieved 
with the hardness of their hearts, looked upon them 
with anger. Why was he angry? Because of their 
inhumanity. Because they put more emphasis upon 
the letter of an institution than upon the sanctity of 
a human life. 

/^ He who said, '' Resist not him that is evil," also 
spoke such words as these : " It is profitable for 
him that a great millstone should be hanged about 
his neck, and that he should be sunk in the 



88 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

depth of the sea " (Matt. i8 : 6) ; " He will miser- 
ably destroy these wicked men" (Matt. 21 : 41) ; 
'* He sent forth his armies, and destroyed those 
murderers, and burned their city" (Matt. 22 : 7). 
Jesus' condemnation of Pharisaism as recorded in 
Matthew 23 is speech of invective blazing with 
moral indignation against the heartless exploiters of 
the poor, who for a pretense make long prayers, 
that they may with greater facility prey upon the 
widow and the fatherless. 

The elements of justice and gentleness, of ten- 
derness and severity, found in the character of 
Jesus need not surprise us. He was the perfect 
man. His virtues were mixed in the right propor- 
tions. He had a character that would melt with 
tenderness and flame with indignation. He was the 
Prince of Peace, but he was also the Lion of the 
tribe of Judah. The gospel is at once a message of 
love and a declaration of war. It comes to bind 
up breaking hearts and also to break oppression, 
to put down the lofty from their seats, and to exalt 
men of low degree. > 1 

We have put great emphasis upon the cross as 
the symbol of Christianity, and in these days of war 
that symbol has taken on a new and richer meaning. 
It is deeply significant that the highest honors that 
are bestowed upon the soldiers for gallant and dis- 
tinguished service, are crosses, the Military, the 
Iron, and the Victoria. 

But the cross is not the only symbol of Chris- 



THE SWORD OF CHRIST 89 

tianity. Said Jesus to the disciples : " Think not 
that I am come to send peace upon the earth; I 
came not to send peace, but a sword." 

His ideas are a sword. It was said by Carlyle 
that democracy was born at Bunker Hill. However 
flattering that may be to national pride, it is not 
correct. Democracy was born at Bethlehem, and 
cradled in the arms of Jesus. If the ground of 
democracy be defined as optimism concerning the 
masses, then it can be said that in Jesus' teaching, 
that man as such is a creature most dear to God, 
we have the beginnings of democracy. 

The application of this revolutionary idea to 
life involved the destruction of an ancient civiliza- 
tion. It meant the emancipation of millions of peo- 
ple from a slavery that not only crushed the body, 
but also destroyed the soul. It meant the abolition 
of monopoly, of aristocracy, of special privilege, 
both in the Church and in the State. It meant that 
nations as well as individuals are under the law of 
love, and that the weak nation as well as the weak 
individual must be protected from the defiantly 
ruthless exploiter. 

Let it be frankly admitted, that the gospel is a 
trouble-brewer; it is an inflamer of the masses; 
it is a flaming sword as well as an olive branch of 
peace. Its latest manifestation as a destructive 
agency is the revolution in Russia, by which an 
ancient monarchy which claimed to rule by right 
divine tumbled over like a house of cards, and mil- 



90 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

lions of the common folk who had never known 
anything but the chains of servitude, awakened to 
the new day of Hberty. 

If war be defined as a conflict of ideals, then in 
this great struggle we are witnessing the free na- 
tions of the earth wielding the sword of democracy, 
w^hich is the sword of Christ, against an arrogant, 
autocratic military caste that is seeking to subjugate 
the world. 

In the days when the* victorious German armies 
were trampling their opponents under foot, and it 
seemed as if the Prussian dream of world empire 
^yas to be realized, Maximilian Harden wrote these 
words in his paper : * " The most distinguished 
ornament of the Germans is that they do not fit in 
with the crowd of peaceable nations. German man- 
hood has not become effeminate by a long peace. 
War was always the most successful business of the 
Germans. Germany means to grow. Germany 
strikes out. Who has given Germany permission? 
Germany's power is Germany's might. Hence the 
present war is a good war." 

There baldly, without ambiguity, you have ex- 
pressed the old pagan idea of the right of might, 
that he shall take who has the power, and he shall 
keep who can. 'Against that evil thing the sword 
of Christ has been drawn again and again down 
through the centuries. Once more the battle is 
joined. Shall brute force become the ruler of the 

^" Zukunft," Sept. 5, 1914. 



THE SWORD OF CHRIST 9I 

nations? Must the weak submit to the pitiless 
domination of the strong? Our only answer to 
that brutal, merciless, monstrous thing is the sword 
of Christ. 

The sword of Christ suggests that there are some 
things that are worth even the supreme sacrifice 
of life itself. Peace at any price is as materialistic 
as it is a cowardly creed. It is based on the idea 
that the greatest evils that can befall a man are 
physical pain and death. Every normal man desires 
peace, if it be a peace of righteousness, that offers 
protection to his wife and children, that enables him 
to enjoy the blessings of civil and religious Hberty 
and the fruits of a good conscience. If, however, 
the price of peace be the surrender of the good to 
the evil, then the normal man will break the peace 
rather than sacrifice the things which give dignity 
and meaning to life. In adopting that course he 
is fulfilling the Royal Law, for a love that does not 
hate and will not fight its opposite, is a love without 
self-respect. 

William Adams Brown has reminded^ us "that 
if love and non-resistance were synonymous, pacif- 
ists would be in the right, but it is not clear that 
this is true. To refrain from fighting when others 
than myself are concerned may be the part of self- 
ishness rather than of courage. Had Belgium not 
resisted Germany, it might have been better for 
Belgium, but what would have been the conse- 

^ " Is Christianity Practicable? " p. 176, 



92 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

quences for France? Shall we condemn Washing- 
ton and Mazzini as unchristian because, when peace- 
able means had been tried in vain, they turned to 
the sword as a last resort? Shall we say that Lin- 
coln was no Christian when he answered the gun 
fired on Sumter with his call for volunteers? To 
do this would be to unwrite some of the noblest 
pages of human history, and rob our children of 
examples by which our own lives have been in- 
spired." 

A love that can remain neutral in the presence 
of injustice and inhumanity, that can dispassionately 
observe the violation of women, the wanton destruc- 
tion of churches, the dropping of bombs upon chil- 
dren sleeping in cradles, is not a love that can be 
ranked among the virtues. It is written that when 
Jesus saw the inhumanity of the Pharisees toward 
the man with the withered hand, he looked upon 
them with anger. And the man who can witness 
the spectacle of Germany riding roughshod over 
the world, without feeling the desire to draw the 
sword of Christ in defense of liberty and democ- 
racy, lacks the spirit of heroic Christianity. 

In this great war we have still another illustration 
of the truth of the words spoken by Jesus to the 
disciples so many centuries ago : " Think not that 
I am come to send peace on the earth; I came not 
to send peace, but a sword." 



VII 

CAN WAR BE ABOLISHED? 

It may seem an inopportune time to discuss the 
abolition of war while the conflict is still raging. 
But we have learned by experience that it is only 
while we are still under the shock of some great 
catastrophe that we are likely to work out provisions 
against another recurrence. Legislation for the pro- 
tection of life usually follows fast upon the heels of 
some ocean tragedy or factory fire, when disaster 
has stung indifference into thoughtful care. 

Discussions of the abolition of war before the 
great conflict began were almost as academic as 
the question, Is Mars inhabited? The men who 
were prominent in peace discussions were rated by 
many level-headed people as impossible idealists. 
To-day war has so thrust itself upon the attention 
of the world, has entailed so much suffering, waste 
of life and money, has so limited our individual Hb- 
erties, has imposed such a staggering load of agony 
upon the shoulders of the world, that instead of be- 
ing a mere academic question it impresses us as 
the only real, important question that demands an 
answer. Now while the brutal god of war is wad- 
ing through human blood, is the time to take counsel 

93 



94 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

how he may be banished forever from an afflicted 
and sorrowful world. 

We must recognize the strength of the influences 
which are operating against the abohtion of war. 

It is claimed by many that war is an inevitable 
phenomenon. It is an immutable law of life, like 
the law of gravitation or of germination. There have 
always been wars, hence there always will be wars. 
According to Treitschke, the German historian: 
" The hope of banishing war is not only meaning- 
less but immoral. Its disappearance would turn the 
earth into a great temple of selfishness. Our age 
is an iron age. If the strong vanquish the weak, it 
is the law of life." If it be true that struggle is 
the universal law of life, that the weak must ever 
become the prey of the strong, that the decision of 
the fifteen-inch gun is the judgment of God, then 
our only course is to bow to the inevitable and ac- 
cept war as an unfortunate but natural law of life. 

It is also contended that war is a necessary factor 
in the march of progress, a teacher of morality, and 
a regenerator of the nation. 

The late Hugo Miinsterberg, in his defense of 
Germany, tried to popularize that view of war 
among the people of America. As the most famous 
exponent of German culture on this continent, an 
exchange professor in one of our leading universi- 
ties, his words are especially significant as illustra- 
tive of the cultivated German mind on the subject 
of war. 



CAN WAR BE ABOLISHED? 95 

He writes ^ : "It is easily said, and the average 
American likes to say it, that nations ought to 
respect the possessions of other nations, as indi- 
viduals respect the private property of their neigh- 
bors. But this apparent highest morality would 
be the grossest immorality. . . The world's 
progress at all times has depended upon the ex- 
pansive ascendency of the strong, sound, solid, and 
able nations, and the shrinking of those which have 
lost their healthy qualities and have become unfit or 
decadent." 

Professor Miinsterberg then gives an alarming 
picture of the decadence of a nation under a long- 
continued peace, and continues : " A victorious war 
may bring to such a nation a complete regeneration ; 
the moral energies awake ; vice is repressed ; life is 
protected; education flourishes; hygiene spreads; 
science rebuilds the land; prosperity grows; tem- 
perance and self-discipline prevail; family life can 
expand in the new abundance. For every boy who 
dies, a score of men and women in the next genera- 
tion will find the means of health and happiness." 

This glorification of war by one of the great lead- 
ers of German thought came as a painful shock to 
a non-militaristic people, and was an important fac- 
tor in arousing the nation to the danger that a tri- 
umphant autocracy, mad with the lust of war and 
world empire, would bring to the entire group of 
the family of nations. 

1 " The War and America," pp. 190, 193. I95. 



96 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

But although such teaching impresses peace- 
loving nations like the United States and Great 
Britain as inhuman and horrible, it is the orthodox 
doctrine of almost the entire German people. For 
more than a score of years German professors and 
writers have been the humble and obedient instru- 
ments of the high bureaucrats at Berlin, in prepar- 
ing the common people mentally and morally for 
the great war that was to make Germany the undis- 
puted master of the world. This doctrine, that 
war as such is desirable, held by a great nation, is 
a powerful influence operating against the abolition 
of war. 

President Wilson, in his reply to Pope Benedict's 
peace proposals, dated August 2j, 1917, clearly 
shows that there can be no proper basis for an 
enduring peace with the present rulers of Germany, 
for the object of this war, as the President points 
out, " is to deliver the free people of the world 
from the menace and the actual power of a vast 
military establishment controlled by an irresponsible 
government, which having secretly planned to dom- 
inate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out 
without regard either to the sacred obligations of 
treaty, or the long-established practices and long- 
cherished principles of international action and 
honor; which chose its own time for the war; de- 
livered its blow fiercely and suddenly; stopped at 
no barrier either of law or of mercy ; swept a whole 
continent with the tide of blood — not the blood of 



CAN WAR BE ABOLISHED? 9/ 

soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and 
children also, and of the helpless poor; and now 
stands balked but not defeated, the enemy of four- 
fifths of the world." These are words that will live 
in history as an expression of American sentiment 
against the horrible doctrine that might makes right 
and that war as such is a desirable thing. 

In opposition to this iron creed of militarism 
must be placed certain influences that are making 
for the abolition of war. 

There is first the conviction that has seized upon 
millions of people, that this must be the last great 
war. 

It has been stated, that one thing which has 
strengthened the soldiers of the Allies to remain 
in the trenches and undergo the terrible sufferings 
and hardships that have fallen to their lot, is the 
conviction that this is the war that will abolish 
war, that they are sealing with their blood the new 
long day of peace and brotherhood. Not only the 
soldiers, but high officials in all the warring coun- 
tries have expressed similar sentiments. A member 
of the Italian war mission that toured the United 
States, was reported by the press as stating in one 
of his speeches : " This must be the last war. Na- 
tions cannot in the future squander all their money 
on military preparedness. The new spirit must 
make us live together in the ideals of peace and 
justice." 
G 



98 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

It is probably true that man is a fighting animal, 
and when the war-drums beat and the bugles blow, 
the old fighting spirit which he has inherited from 
a thousand ancestors breaks through the thin crust 
of acquired habits of ease and culture. The fatal 
fascination of war, even to the man who hates war, 
has been put very beautifully by Richard Le Gal- 
lienne : 

War I abhor, 
And yet how sweet the sound along the 

marching street, 
Of drum and fife, and I forget 
Broken old mothers, and the whole 
Dark butchering without a soul. 

Oh, it is wickedness to clothe 

Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks 

Hidden in music, like a queen 

That in a garden of glory walks, 

Till good men love the things they loathe ; 

Art, thou hast many infamies. 

But not an infamy like this. 

And yet the old chivalry and romance of war is a 
thing of the past. It really began to disappear 
when gunpowder came in. " War," as Frederick 
Palmer sees it, after representing the American 
press in the trenches of France, " is a huge industry, 
in which men are engaged in the business of killing 
by machinery." To kill a man three, six, ten miles 
away, whom you never saw, and never will see, by 
a gun that will send a shell twenty miles, is not an 



CAN WAR BE ABOLISHED? 99 

act that will make any very strong appeal to even 
the most brutal of God's creatures. 

The naked realism of war by machinery, with 
its blood-stained trenches, torpedoed ships sinking 
amid the wails of women and children, blocks of 
houses blown up by shells which fall from the sky, 
regiments of men crumbling into fragments through 
mine explosions, is revolting to any man of even 
limited fine feeling and sentiment. 

There are few honest militarists left in Europe 
to-day. After two years of war even the German 
chancellor had experienced a sufficient change of 
heart to state in the course of an address in the 
Reichstag, " The peace which ends this war must 
be a lasting peace, and must not bear the germ of 
new wars, but that of a peaceful arrangement of 
all European questions." The conviction that this 
must be the last great war, a conviction that has 
been burned into us by the horrors of the present 
conflict, is a powerful influence making for the abo- 
lition of war. 

A second influence that is making for the abo- 
lition of war is the keener sense of the solidarity 
of the race. 

When Washington warned his fellow countrymen 
against entangling alliances, America was a Robin- 
son Crusoe among the nations. The ties that bound 
the United States to the old world were so few 
that they could be ignored by the five million people 



lOO THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

living in this country. To-day, as a result of mod- 
ern inventions, the whole world is a neighborhood 
and every man a calling acquaintance. This war 
has taught that the world is one big family, that if 
one member suffers all suffer, that a nation can 
no more be indifferent to this present reign of blood 
than the brain of man can ignore a violent attack 
of appendicitis in that part of the body where ap- 
pendicitis manifests itself. 

We have seen the fire started in one of the 
Balkan states spreading from country to country, 
until practically the whole world is ablaze. In the 
modern world war cannot be localized. There are 
too many ties, commercial, social, and racial, bind- 
ing us together. The neutral nations must suffer 
along with the belligerent states, the innocent with 
the guilty. War can no longer be regarded as a 
private matter. We have learned in the bitter 
school of experience that the race is a unit, that the 
nation that breaks the public peace is an enemy of 
the public good, and must be dealt with by the 
common will and law of humanity. This war, which 
has so strongly emphasized the solidarity of the 
race, is a most potent influence making for the abo- 
lition of war. 

The strong stand that the working people of the 
world are taking against war must of necessity 
prove itself a powerful influence in favor of per- 
manent peace. 



CAN WAR BE ABOLISHED T lOI 

If the case against Germany as the aggressor in 
the world war liad been less convincing, England 
and France would have collapsed in the early 
months of the war through lack of support and 
loyalty on the part of the masses of the workers. 
So deep is this passion for peace that a war of con- 
quest would not be tolerated to-day in any of the 
free countries of the world. 

In an autocracy the common people have no voice 
in the affairs of state; they are not permitted to 
direct the machinery of government. That fact, 
coupled with a rigid censorship and the summary 
punishment of all who refuse to submit to those in 
authority, explains the ignoble stand of the social- 
ists and working men of Germany. Indeed, the 
orthodox socialist party has permitted itself to be 
used as a tool of despotism by attempting to incite 
to sedition the working men among the nations of 
their enemies, and thus bring about the triumph 
of autocracy and fasten the chains of servitude more 
firmly upon the workers of the world. It also ex- 
plains the refusal of the Allies to begin peace ne- 
gotiations with the overlords and military despots 
of the present German regime. 

The part that Russia has played in the war since 
the Revolution has been most disheartening to all 
who believe that the Allies are fighting the great 
battle of freedom and democracy. From another 
standpoint it is prophetic of the dawn of a brighter 
day. It proves that the hatred of the masses against 



102 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

war is so instinctive and violent, that when democ- 
racy wins out and the common people come to their 
own, war is one of the evil things that will be 
abolished. 

One of the strongest influences making for the 
abolition of war is the conviction that war is un- 
profitable. 

The new and improved methods of transporting 
food and munition supplies, by which millions in- 
stead of hundreds of thousands of soldiers can be 
kept on the firing-line; the multiplication of terri- 
ble engines of w^ar for the destruction of human 
life ; the fact that as a result of the invention of the 
submarine, the aeroplane, and the zeppelin, death 
and destruction can burst forth from under the sea 
and out of the sky — all these fruits of modern war- 
fare are so horrible, that the common sense of man- 
kind demands that war shall be abolished. 

H. G. Wells pictures ^ Mars sitting like a giant 
above all human affairs for the next two decades, 
and declaring his will in speech blunt and plain. 
Mr. Wells writes : " Mars will say to us all : * Get 
your houses in order. If you squabble among 
yourselves, waste time, litigate, muddle, snatch 
profits, and shirk obHgations I will certainly come 
down among you again. I have taken all your men 
between eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed 
such as I pleased, millions of them; I have wasted 

2 " What is Coming? " p. 93. 



CAN WAR BE ABOLISHED? IO3 

your substance. Now mark you, you have multi- 
tudes of male children between the ages of nine 
and nineteen running about among you. Delightful 
and beloved boys. And behind them come millions 
of delightful babies. Go on in the old way, ob- 
struct, waste, squabble, and presently I will come 
back again, and take all that fresh harvest of life 
I have spared. And I will squeeze it into red pulp 
between my hands, I will mix it in the blood of the 
trenches, and feast upon it before your eyes, even 
more damnably then I have done with your 
grown-up sons and young men. And I have taken 
most of your superfluities already ; next time I will 
take your barest necessities.' " 

War can be abolished as other evils have been 
abolished. Chattel slavery, feudalism, gladiatorial 
contests, ecclesiastical tyranny with its machinery, 
the rack, the thumbscrew, and the dungeon, have 
been abolished. War is a survival of a barbaric 
age that now in its turn must go the way of these 
other evils. 

So strong is this sentiment against war, that in 
the countries of all the nations concerted action 
is being taken for some program that will make im- 
possible another such world tragedy as we are now 
witnessing. 

In this general movement for a peace that shall 
be permanent, the churches should have a leading 
part, for we are faced with the fact that, under the 



104 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

strain and agony of war, the veils of our civiliza- 
tion have been torn away, and there has been a near 
relapse into barbarism. For the church to lag or 
to remain passive in the peace movement, is to show 
herself unworthy of her position as a teacher of the 
public conscience. The churches can make a con- 
tribution to world peace by combating the pagan 
passion for reprisals, by crystallizing public opinion 
in favor of a peace that shall be based on the laws 
of humanity and justice and will not contain the 
germ of new wars, and by putting emphasis on the 
Christian doctrine of the sanctity of human life and 
the duty of forgiveness. If peace is to mean some- 
thing more than the disbanding of armies and the 
resumption of diplomatic relations, it must carry 
with it a change of spirit; and for that change of 
spirit the churches have a special mission and 
responsibility. 

There have sprung up during the past three years 
a number of peace societies, dominated, and in some 
cases financed, by men of pro-German sympathies, 
whose one object was to keep America out of the 
fight for freedom and to help Germany to win the 
war. 

The Socialist party in America has been under 
the thumb of German influence since the beginning 
of the war. Many of the most prominent members 
of that party have resigned as a protest against a 
program that was essentially unneutral, un- 
American, and pro-German. It is to be hoped that 



CAN WAR BE ABOLISHED? IO5 

the example of such men as John Spargo will be 
followed by other men in that party who believe 
that, to maintain the ideals of liberty and democ- 
racy, an ounce of fighting is worth a pound of talk, 
and that so long as the Socialist party converses 
with a German accent, it is not a good place for 
men who are fighting Prussian autocracy and sub- 
marine piracy. 

Peace is not a matter of sentimental evangelism. 
It will not come through talk, even if it be talk 
from such an illustrious person as Pope Benedict 
of Rome. The most dominant fact in the world to- 
day is brutal, merciless force. The strong man fully 
armed is out to impose his will upon a weary world, 
and it would be as profitable to hold a peace con- 
versation with a lightning flash or an earthquake 
as with him. The only way that the strong man 
can be dealt with, is by opposing to him a force so 
strong and irresistible that he will be compelled to 
take to his corner and bow his head in subjection. 

Peace is a matter of practical statesmanship, and 
not of sentimental moonshine. In the League to 
Enforce Peace we have, in the judgment of many 
good authorities, an adequate organization for the 
preservation of world peace. It has been approved 
by such men as President Wilson, former President 
Taft, Lloyd George, and other leading statesmen 
of the world. The feature in which it differs from 
other peace organizations lies in the point that 
obliges all the members of the League to declare 



I06 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

war on any member violating the pact of peace. 
Robert Goldsmith writes ^ on how the forces of the 
League would be employed : " The forces of the 
League would be used for one purpose only, to com- 
pel submission of matters in dispute to a court of 
inquiry before any war was begun ; they would not 
be employed to execute the judgments of the court 
or to enforce the unwilling acceptance of awards. 
The appeal to arms would still remain available to 
the several nations as a last resort. It is believed 
that the prolonged postponement, plus the public 
discussion, plus the justice of the award, would all 
tend to insure its acceptance in the majority of 
cases." 

It is true that the League has been attacked on 
the ground that it is a league to enforce peace. 
Moral suasion is good, but in the present evil world 
a man must sometimes fear God and take his own 
part. Why is it that life and property are safe or 
comparatively safe in the country in which we live ? 
It is because between us and the strong man with 
the predatory instincts there is the bulwark of 
force. Abolish that force which keeps order in the 
community, and substitute moral suasion, and law- 
lessness and crime and anarchy would run riot. 

The world had already taken one step in the for- 
mation of an international court for the settlement 
of disputes that may arise among the nations. Its 
weakness is that no nation is compelled to bring 

3 " A League to Enforce Peace," p. xxiii. 



CAN WAR BE ABOLISHED? IO7 

her case before the court. The contribution that 
the League to Enforce Peace makes toward world 
peace, is that behind the court it puts the sheriff. 

Let us suppose that in the summer of 191 4 there 
had been in existence such a league, and when Aus- 
tria put the pistol to the head of Servia, the League 
had said : " This question of the assassination of 
an Austrian archduke must be submitted to an 
international court. If you refuse, we will employ 
against you our combined military and economic 
resources." Do you think that the Teutonic powers 
would then have leaped into the arena? Unfortu- 
nately the machinery for preserving peace was not 
ready. It is our solemn obligation to-day to get it 
ready. 

Peace is on the way. Militarism, with its battle- 
ships and standing armies, secret diplomacy, and 
worship of the state as independent of the laws 
of God and humanity, with its brutal creed that 
might makes right, that the states are natural ene- 
mies, that the strong should gobble up the weak, 
stands condemned by the conscience of the world. 

The only thing that will save society from another 
such world cataclysm, is the application of the so- 
cial principles of Christianity to the present inter- 
national order. We have clung to the old gods of 
hate and greed and pride, and they have nearly 
wrecked our civilization. Idealism is forced upon 
us, and we cry with Tennyson : 



I08 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease; 
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; 
Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace. 

Ring in the valiant man and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be. 



VIII 
WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, WHAT? 

^nia tijc cnxcxbh oi Olob t« cast 
®l|g lahortng earti^ zinb all tl^at hfoell tl|emn, 
(iroamttg anh trji&atlmg m pam anb sm, 
pictglieh bB^n hg l^ca&g burbm of t\}t past, 
®{|ere ta be cleanseb li^ sorrofo's bitter tears, 
®rteh in tlje fire, purgeb td all tlje bross, 
^umanitg itself naileb to tl|e cross 
Prttil — regenerate, (Man reappears. 

— Francis Annesley, in " Chambers' JoumaL' 

For more than three years we have been Hving 
under the shadow of a great world horror. Some- 
how the sunshine has not seemed so bright, the trees 
and flowers so beautiful, and human life so valuable, 
since this great conflict plunged the world into 
bloodshed and anarchy. When we consider the fear- 
ful carnage in Europe, devastated cities, starving 
women and children, men by the thousands dying in 
agony upon blood-stained battle-fields, without a 
sympathetic face or a kindly word to cheer them as 
they make the leap into the unseen, multitudes who 
have been broken in body and mind, sightless and 
disfigured, crippled and impoverished, peace seems 
the most desirable thing that could come to an af- 

109 



no THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

flicted world. It is natural, therefore, that in these 
days of war our minds should instinctively turn to 
thoughts of peace, and that the phrase, " When the 
war is over," should be heard continually from our 
lips. 

It would be an unwise procedure to make any at- 
tempt at forecasting the probable duration of the 
war. There are so many forces hidden from the 
gaze of the ordinary individual, that to assume the 
role of a prophet is a most perilous undertaking. 
Germany made the great mistake at the beginning 
of the conflict in assuming that the war would be 
over in two months, and that miscalculation has 
cost the lives of millions of men. It is said that the 
Kaiser told his soldiers that they would be away 
about six weeks, leaving Germany as soon as the 
wheat had been put in shock, and returning in time 
for the threshing in September. When Kitchener 
organized the fighting forces of Great Britain on 
the assumption that the war would last three years, 
even the military experts refused to take him seri- 
ously. Perhaps the best answer was that of a South 
African who remarked reflectively to the inter- 
viewer who sought a definite time limit, " Well sir, 
I can't hardly say, but it looks to me as though 
this 'ere war 'as settled down into a sort of insti- 
tution." One thing is certain, that if the war con- 
tinues at the present rate of expenditure of human 
life and money, it must speedily come to a close 
from sheer exhaustion on the part of thd nations 



WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, WHAT? Ill 

involved in the struggle. And the expenditure does 
not grow less. 

When the war is over, the world will be con- 
fronted with great and serious problems. 

Victor Hugo, writing of the battle of Waterloo, 
described it as a change of front on the part of 
the universe. He meant by that rather far-fetched 
phrase, that some of the great political and social 
movements of history dated from Waterloo. But 
if the Napoleonic wars resulted in great changes, 
we may confidently expect that the after-war world 
will be confronted with new and gigantic problems 
of every kind, national and international, economic 
and religious. 

All writers on the subject are agreed that the 
changes will be far-reaching and serious. Gilbert 
Parker declares : ^ " This world war is a purga- 
torial passage through which mankind is moving 
into a new existence. Whatever be the end, who- 
ever the victors, the active, peopled, fighting, or- 
ganized, yet disordered world of our knowing, 
with its arbitrary boundaries and errant ambitions, 
will never be the same again. Many of the old land- 
marks, political, social, economic will be obliterated. 
The old lamps will be exchanged for the new." 

Paul Sabatier thinks that out of the bloody 
womb of war a new civilization is to emerge into 
the light of a better day. He writes : " Instinc- 

1 " The World in the Crucible," p. 380. 



112 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAk 

tively we walk on tiptoe, we lower our voices and 
say but little, when we enter a house where a child 
is about to be born. Now to-day it is more than 
a child that is about to see the light; a whole civil- 
ization is on the point of entering life." ^ 

John Haynes Holmes hopes for the best, but is 
prepared for the worst. He writes : ^ " What this 
end will be no man at the present moment can dare 
even so much as to surmise. For the first time since 
the pyramids were builded in the Egyptian deserts, 
men find themselves living in an age, and looking 
upon a situation, wherein the forces of human life 
have passed beyond the control of those who have 
madly created them and as madly set them free. 
For the first time perhaps in history, anything may 
happen." 

It may confidently be expected that when the war 
is over we shall have witnessed the downfall of 
autocracy and tyranny in every quarter of the 
world. 

This is the last great war for democracy. It 
means that the final nail is to be driven into the 
coffin of that hoary falsehood, the divine right of 
kings. The three free nations of the earth, Great 
Britain, France, and the United States, are to make 
the world safe for democracy. The clock that 
marks the hour of democracy is striking. The day 

2 " A Frenchman's Thoughts on the War," p. 2. 

3 " New Wars for Old," pp. 4, 5. 



WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, WHAT? II3 

of the little nation and of the common man is about 
to dawn. The unspeakable Turk, whose hands are 
dripping with the blood of a million slaughtered 
Armenians, will be driven out of Europe as an 
undesirable citizen, and his future operations in 
Asia will be under police supervision until he has 
demonstrated his fitness for a place among the 
family of nations. 

The triumph of democracy means that the Kaiser 
and his military machine must be smashed into 
smithereens. The man who talks of peace with the 
Kaiser, however conscientious and sincere, is an un- 
conscious tool of a despotism that would keep the 
world in slavery. President Wilson, in his reply to 
the peace proposals of Pope Benedict XV, has clearly 
shown that there can be no enduring peace so long 
as the world is menaced by the actual power of a 
vast military machine controlled by an irresponsible 
government. Mr. Wilson is absolutely correct in 
his contention that " this power is not the German 
people. It is the ruthless master of the German 
people. It is no business of ours how that great 
people came under its control, or submitted with 
temporary zest to the domination of its purpose; 
but it is our business to see to it that the history 
of the rest of the world is no longer left to its han- 
dling." This military caste, headed by the Kaiser, 
and assisted by their tribal deity, rules Prussia. 
Prussia rules Germany. Germany controls Austria- 
Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, and aspires to 

H 



114 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

dominate the world. It is that evil thing we are 
fighting; and when we win — and win we must for 
the sake of those who come after us — then, and not 
until then, will the world be made safe for democ- 
racy. 

It is the hope of many, who believe that to make 
the world safe for democracy means something 
more than the defeat of autocracy, that when the 
war is over there will be ushered in a new era of 
social justice. 

When the millions of men who have struggled 
and suffered on the firing-line return to their dif- 
ferent countries, they will constitute a mighty army 
that will demand a more equitable distribution of 
the wealth created by society. Our civilization has 
so developed in peace times, that a comparatively 
small group of men control the greater part of 
the world wealth and are rich beyond the dreams 
of avarice, while multitudes of people live in 
squalid, hopeless, and crime-producing poverty. An 
Australian statesman, in a speech at Cardiff, told 
the men of Britain they must face the facts : " You 
cannot have a great nation when the base is rotten, 
when twelve millions of people are on the verge of 
starvation. There can be no peace until we have 
purged the world of the monstrous cancer which 
is eating out the vitals of civilization." Economic 
conditions in the United States are by no means 
ideal. As nearly as can be estimated, the distribu- 



WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, WHAT? Il5 

tion of wealth in this country is as follows: The 
rich, composing two per cent of the people, own 
sixty per cent of the wealth. The middle class, 
thirty-three per cent of the people, own thirty-five 
per cent of the wealth. The poor, sixty-five per 
cent of the people, own five per cent of the wealth. 
There is something wrong with a society, in which 
two per cent of the population control sixty per 
cent of the wealth, while sixty-five per cent of the 
people are living a hand-to-mouth existence, and by 
their back-breaking labor, are supporting a host of 
parasites who reap where they have not sowed, and 
gather where they have not strawed. Neither in 
Great Britain nor in the United States have eco- 
nomic conditions been made safe for democracy. 

This unjust distribution of wealth and income 
has been the main factor in bringing about a class 
war which is growing in bitterness, and threatens 
the very existence of organized society. In accor- 
dance with figures compiled by the United States 
Bureau of Labor Statistics, between the years 
1881 and 1905, 36,757 strikes, aflfecting 181,407 
CvStablishments, took place. Nearly nine million 
employees were thrown out of work by these in- 
dustrial disputes. While statistics are of value, 
they are totally inadequate to reveal the real cost 
of labor disturbances. They may record the num- 
ber of men involved, the property destroyed, the 
lives sacrificed, but they throw little light on re- 
tarded development, deferred payments, hungry and 



Il6 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

Starving children, women driven into prostitution, 
and the kindHng of the fires of animosities, hate, 
and bitterness. 

An American pubhcist who has a reputation for 
sane speaking, recently predicted* that the end of 
our present social order will come before 1930. 
He points out that '' many of the social tendencies 
of the present are strikingly like those which pre- 
ceded the French Revolution. The parallel, between 
present social unrest and that which preceded the 
storm of the French Revolution, would probably 
be assented to by nearly all students of social his- 
tory. The blindness and ultraconservatism of many 
of our privileged classes on the one hand, the fanatic 
radicalism and one-sidedness of many of the leaders 
of the non-privileged on the other, would breed 
trouble in any social order." 

The end of the war will bring critical days, and 
it is not improbable that what has happened in 
Russia will happen in other countries that are under 
despotic rule. In the three great democratic coun- 
tries, the United States, France, and Great Britain, 
the changes in the social order will, we trust, come 
about through the orderly processes of law and 
government, rather than by the bloody path of 
revolution. We must, however, fairly face the fact, 
that there are stormy days ahead of us. If ever we 
needed statesmen, it is at the present moment. 
Whether the war will give birth to a monster that 

*" American Journal of Sociology," Jan., 1915, p, 487. 



WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, WHAT? II7 

will aevour us and our children, or an angel that 
will lead us into the promised land of peace and 
social justice, will depend largely upon the vision 
of the men who to-day are directing the affairs 
of our country. 

Under the strain of war we have seen the govern- 
ments of the various belligerent nations taking over 
the control of much of the principal means of pro- 
duction and distribution. It was found that the old 
way of unrestricted competition and private con- 
trol was totally inadequate in a time of national 
emergency- Regulation of food prices, the com- 
mandeering of entire stocks of food supplies, the 
direct operation of mines, railways, and shipping, 
were forced upon the governments in the interests 
of public economy and safety. Not only capitalists 
and employers of labor, but the working men as well 
were compelled to submit to restrictions and to sur- 
render rights and privileges which had been won 
only after years of bitter struggle. 

War has given us a coercive cooperative com- 
monwealth. It has written the principles of brother- 
hood, of public service, of sacrifice for the common 
good, into the fabric of our economic order. These 
lessons we have learned in days of war, we shall 
not forget in times of peace. The old kaisers of 
the industrial and commercial world, who ruled by 
right divine, who hired and fired, and profanely 
warned the general public not to meddle with that 
which was none of their business, will not be toler- 



Il8 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

ated in the new social order that is already growing 
up before our eyes. 

Mr. H. G. Wells is of the opinion^ "that by 
1926 we shall be going about in a world that will 
have recovered very largely from the impoverish- 
ment of the struggle; we shall tour in state-manu- 
factured automobiles upon excellent roads, and we 
shall live in houses equipped with a national fac- 
tory electric light installation, and at every turn we 
shall be using and consuming the products of na- 
tionalized industry — and paying off the national 
debt at the same time." 

The new order will not arrive without meeting 
the most determined hostility from selfish and ruth- 
less individuals, who have fattened themselves so' 
long out of the huge profits bled from a helpless 
public that they have come to regard it as a gracious 
arrangement of divine Providence. It is conceivable 
that, before the common man comes to his own, 
some painful and bloody chapters must be written 
in our social history. We have good reasons for 
believing that the lessons of self-sacrifice and coop- 
eration all classes have been compelled to learn 
during the war, will result in the downfall of that 
iron materialism which has been the religion and the 
curse of all countries for so many years. The read- 
justment to new conditions will be painful and 
costly, but one almost certain result will be the 
emancipation of the common man from economic 

5 " What is Coming," p. 122. 



WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, WHAT? II9 

wrongs into the n6w liberty of equality of oppor- 
tunity. The full triumph of democracy means that 
predatory classes, as well as predatory nations, must 
be abolished. 

The women have not escaped the high cost of 
war. They have paid the price equally with the 
men. What the women of Belgium and the women 
of northern France have suffered in the past three 
years, God only knows. It is said that the French 
government is considering in what way such women 
can best be helped to bear their almost unfathom- 
able misery. The stories told concerning some of 
these innocent victims of Prussian hellishness are 
so horrible, so unspeakably devilish, that even men 
of humane dispositions, who have more than an 
average regard for the sanctity of human life, 
would consider it an honor to fire a gun that would 
blow to the place where they belong the men who 
are responsible for such outrages against woman- 
hood and motherhood. 

Whatever may be the glamor of war to the man 
of ardent temperament who has the spirit of heroic 
adventure, to women it is nothing but a hideous, 
monstrous evil, and to mothers it is hell. John 
Bennett in a poem ^ savagely realistic, entitled " The 
Accounting," gives an indictment of the warlords 
who have taken men out into the bloody shambles. 
The account is to be paid to the mothers. 

® " Harper's Weekly," Aug. 29, 1914, p. 203. 



120 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

You have left them to rot where the stars blaze hot, 

You have left them astare in the ice; 
You have boughten your place and power and pride; 

But God! Who has paid the price? 

We the mothers of men who bare them, 

Who suckled them at our breast, 
Stand row on row, on cliff and voe. 

North, East, and South, and West. 

But the women have been something more than 
passive spectators and sufferers in the world war. 
Since it began, the world of industry has been in- 
vaded by great armies of working w^omen, and that 
invasion is prophetic of a new day for women 
in the after-war world. 

In England, there are estimated to be more than 
four and a quarter millions of paid women workers 
engaged in regular occupations, and in this number 
are not included the voluntary hundreds of thou- 
sands, the many nurses and part-time workers. 
Millions of women, heroically, cheerfully, have faced 
death and mutilation in munition factories, and 
thousands have performed this service, not from 
necessity or the hope of gain, but from a fine sense 
of public duty. S. S. McClure relates ^ this in- 
cident : " Lord Haldane told me an illustrative anec- 
dote of a house-party in Scotland. A young lady 
excused herself at half past nine o'clock. Lord 
Haldane asked her where she was going so early. 

' " Obstacles to Peace," p. 420. 



WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, WHAT? 121 

She said she was on the night shift. This girl, the 
daughter of a wealthy and noble family, was work- 
ing nights in a munition factory." 

The old argument against woman suffrage, that 
men must fight and women weep, no longer holds 
true. The women have done something more than 
weep during the past three years. Thousands have 
gone to the front as nurses and hospital attendants, 
and endured all the physical dangers and discom- 
forts of war, while millions of others have taken 
the places of men in almost every kind of industry, 
thus freeing hundreds of thousands of men for the 
firing-line. It is the opinion of almost all writers 
upon the subject that woman suffrage is absolutely 
sure. The women, by their sacrifices, their readi- 
ness to submit to long hours of hard and monoto- 
nous labor in occupations that were formerly re- 
garded as the exclusive possessions of men, have 
demonstrated their fitness for the vote. One thing 
seems reasonably certain, that after the war woman 
will occupy a position of political and economic in- 
dependence unknown in all her past history. 

One of the saddest after-effects of the great war 
will be the legacies of hate and passion which must 
result between the groups of nations now engaged 
in the great struggle. This war has cut so deep 
into the souls of the nations that generations must 
pass before the scars have disappeared. It has 
been proposed to follow up the present war with a 



122 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

commercial war upon the Teutonic powers, by in- 
stituting a boycott against German goods, and if 
possible prevent Germany from regaining her over- 
seas trade. It is evident that such a policy, if car- 
ried out, would perpetuate the spirit of hate and 
keep alive the fires of animosities for a fresh con- 
flagration of war. 

It is the plain duty of the church to oppose this 
spirit of revenge by emphasizing the Christian teach- 
ing of forgiveness. She must set her face like flint 
against reprisals, boycotts, and all forms of na- 
tional aggrandizement at the expense of the con- 
quered. Christian leaders must put new emphasis 
on the gospel of social reconciliation. The love, 
which sent us out to fight when liberty, democracy, 
and the rights of the weak were imperiled by mer- 
ciless brute force, must also express itself in the 
forgiveness of enemies and in binding up the cruel 
wounds that war has made. 

As an antidote to this spirit of revenge, we can 
remember that the masses of the people are in no 
way responsible for this bloody war. They believe 
that they are fighting in defense of home and coun- 
try, and the motives that inspire them may be 
as pure and noble as those which fire the soldiers of 
the Allies. 

W. N. Ewer, in a beautiful little poem,^ pictures 
the souls of five men, a peasant of the Polish plain, 
a Tyrolese, a native of Lyons, a German, and a 

8 " Five Souls," in " The Nation." 



WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, WHAT? I23 

Scotchman, who were slain in battle, meeting and 
explaining why they fought. All had good reasons 
for fighting and all were able to say, 

I gave my life for freedom — this I know, 
For those who bade me fight, had told me so. 

The sentiment expressed in the poem is absolutely 
true. The great majority of people accept their 
opinions ready made, from those to whom they 
have been accustomed to look as their political and 
moral leaders. This is particularly true of the 
German people. They are by nature and training 
docile and obedient, reverencing the Kaiser as al- 
most the representative of deity on earth, and with 
an unreasoning submission to any commands that 
may be laid upon them by those in authority. 

When the war is over, forgiveness. Unless we 
banish the spirit of hate and cultivate a spirit of 
good will, no league of peace can guarantee us 
against another such war. There can be no mechan- 
ical solution for a moral fault. The church, which 
was not able to prevent the present war, if she be 
loyal to the Christian ideals of love, brotherhood, 
and forgiveness, may be able to eradicate the evils 
of hate, greed, and national pride and ambition, 
which are the fruitful sources of all wars. 

The glad day when the war is over ! How many 
wives and mothers with husbands and sons in the 
trenches are longing for that day! 



124 THE SWORD OF CHRIST AND THE WORLD WAR 

There was recently published in one of the popu- 
lar magazines a poem by Laura Spencer Porter, in- 
terpreting a painting by C. Arnold Slade, entitled 
'* Peace." In the glories of the dying day a woman 
sits in a chair by a dining-table, and a little child 
upon her knees is saying her evening prayer. The 
face of the woman is worn and her eyes are closed. 
She sees a vision, for behind her is the shadowy 
form of a soldier in blue and he is pressing a kiss 
upon her brow. Underneath are the words of in- 
terpretation : 

When the day is ending he shall come some day, 

Even as of old, yea, in the same old way. 

Naught shall be changed. The sunlight still shall fall 

With lengthening shadows on the floor and wall. 

The little tasks all finished, once again 

I'll wait for him, but shall not wait in vain. 

For he shall come and place upon my brow 

The old sweet kiss, and he shall say, " O thou, 

Thou who hast waited, I am come at last. 

The hideous dream of war is past, is past. 

O my beloved, let thy grieving cease — 

For once more men are brothers — there is peace." 

It is for that day we hope and fight and pray, the 
day when the vision of the old Hebrew prophet 
shall be realized, " when men shall beat their swords 
into plowshares, and their spears into pruning- 
hooks," the day when "nation shall not lift up 
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war 
any more." 



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